Sometime around 6:30 p.m. EDT, I will have a draft done, approximately 3500 words. Is anyone available who could read it over for glaring typos, etc.? before say 10 EDT? <.<
Submitted!
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1047522.html. You can comment here or there.
In a place between the stars, where dreams live, a man named Pterry was writing.
His mind was clear and his eyes were clear, and his fingers flew across the keys. Still, he noticed immediately when the two walked in.
“We heard you had a casting call, mate.” One was fair and smiling, the other dark and dour.
“You’re not my normal types…” Even as he said it, the man called Pterry’s mind was slotting them this way and that. Not the Guard, no. Not the Wizards, that lot was too silly. Not the Assassins, too crass. The Witches, maybe, if they’d been women… he put that idea aside for another day. He hadn’t done much to the Thieves’ Guild; maybe they needed shaking up?
He’d barely gotten the thought finished when the fair one was grinning at him. “What do you need us to be, then?”
The dark one smiled. It was a surprisingly bright and cheerful expression, lighting up his face and the room. “We’re nothing if not versatile.”
The man called Pterry began to think, and words flew across his screen at the speed of thought. The printer beside him rumbled and creaked – because even printers have dreams – and two scripts shot out of the tray.
He handed them off, the ink still wet. “Take a gander at this, then.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1047073.html. You can comment here or there.
When Tijana Sheffield had been twenty-five, a redheaded woman had walked into her town and walked directly up to Tijana.
She’d been talking to the whole small marketplace, but her eyes never left Tijana in her little knit-goods booth. “Cloverleaf needs craftspeople. It needs farmers. It needs workers. And in return, it has running water, electricity, and tall walls. It has security, and room to grow and change.”
Most of the tiny town of Warm River didn’t want room to grow or to change. They liked their nice, secure place with few bandits and no fairies.
Tijana had left, and Amos the baker’s son. They’d been scolded, fussed at, complained at, and warned, but both of them knew it was better if they left. A town and tight and small as Warm River, strangeness wasn’t wanted or needed. It was better for everyone if they left.
Now Tijana was thirty-five, married, with three children and a thriving business. She’d married an inventor (or, as he called himself, a re-inventor) who had a knack for reading old stories and figuring out a way to duplicate what the ancients had had before the war, for taking old mechanisms and making them go again.
And she’d gone from a small business knitting for Warm River to a thriving shop. The red-haired woman, the Mayor of Cloverleaf, liked sweaters, and thus much of Cloverleaf liked sweaters. She had two apprentices working the knitting machines that her husband had rigged up, and she kept her own hands busy with increasingly complicated patterns on the hems, necklines, and cuffs. She was growing, improving. And you couldn’t walk down Main Street without seeing a couple of her sweaters and a couple more copies.
And now the Mayor wanted to buy two of her sweaters. Tijana picked up her wool and started knitting. She had a couple new ideas, and if anyone would appreciate the innovation, it was going to be the Mayor.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1047002.html. You can comment here or there.
Turning things into other things!
(Derivational morphology)
because Whispers Drop started out with a very small vocabulary (for plot-based reasons), it is very heavy on suffixes and prefixes to derive more meaning from one word.
For examples:
shef is cat
fena is to slink
“process or state” -orf
That would, technically, be “slinkage” or “the process of slinking across the hall, WHY did I pick slink?
fenorf, slinkage.
And, ah, cattiness, the state of being cat (because this is a noun, it is a prefix) For(f)shef, forshef
When moving a -VLC suffix to prefix, repeat the ending C in the beginning. If it is prefixing (a rule here that includes sh and other awkward sounds), remove the ending C in the prefix.
And there, we have one derivational morphology!
I can get /days/ out of this.
Which is good, because I’m way behind.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1046759.html. You can comment here or there.
It had been sixteen years since the world began falling apart. Most of their students could barely remember the world before the end – if they had even been alive.
Luke had been doing quite a bit of yelling at Regine over the last decade and a half, so when it came time for this conversation, Reid and Laurel took point. They let themselves into their boss’s office and waited, patient but implacable, until she acknowledged them.
Laurel started. “Since the Gods’ War, we’ve been seeing more kids either staying in the Village after graduation or leaving their children there.”
“Yes.” Regine nodded. “That is what the Village and the creche are for.”
“The Village is an option, Director. Not the option.”
“It’s safe and comfortable.” They had not yet gotten her attention. Laurel raised an eyebrow at Reid.
“You either need to get rid of power and running water in the school and most of the Village, or you need to provide the students with the resources and aid to set those things up in settlements of their choice out in the world.” He had a good no-nonsense voice, Reid did. It made Regine raise an eyebrow.
“I am not interested in the world outside and neither is Addergoole as an institution.”
“Bullshit.” Laurel could be polite if she chose, but at the moment, being rude suited her better. “This school was built to save the world.”
“It was built to save fae. I do recall, I was there.”
“You’re splitting hairs, Regine.” Only Reid could pull off scolding like that. “As you yourself have told me, fae needed to be saved to save humanity.”
Regine sighed. “It puts them in danger. They are safe here.”
“They’re stagnant,” Laurel countered. “You’re raising an entire generation of children who will care not one bit for the outside world. They’ll be insular, and with each following generation, they’ll only get more so.”
“The Council was insular,” Reid followed. “And they have failed and fallen. You can’t take the children out of the world, Regine.”
“The world needs them.” Laurel folded her hands in front of her and waited.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1046141.html. You can comment here or there.
This is written to ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chanter_greenie‘s commissioned request for more of Zita and Amantia. It comes after most of the events in Addergoole: Year Nine. Thanks to wyste, whose character Zita is, for helping with Zita’s lines.
The sun was bright. Amantia blinked up at it. She remembered what it felt like; she remembered what it looked like, but that had been years ago. She’d never thought she’d live to see a meadow again.
She flopped down into the grass, feeling the prickle of the stalks through her wetsuit. When she’d first gotten sent to the basement, she’d really believed that someone, anyone would come up with a cure for her problem soon – just a week, just a month, just a year. For the last year, she’d really expected to die any minute now. The beasts had been attacking, they were stuck.
Now, she didn’t know. She was out of the basement. She was in the sun. She could – well, she already knew she couldn’t run away, but getting out of the basement was the first step towards any kind of freedom at all. She could do this. Maybe she could even learn how to stop killing people.
A light breeze picked up, brushing over Amantia. She rolled up into a sitting position and smiled. With her arms outstretched, she could pretend she could feel the breeze all over her body.
“That should be enough.” A soft voice barely reached her ears. Amantia stiffened and dropped her arms. She’d been left alone, but she had known she was being supervised. They wouldn’t trust her to be alone here they wouldn’t trust her at all.
Professor Valerian was standing just at the top of a low rise, not looking at Amantia. She looked sad, Amantia thought, and perhaps tired. “Just stay to this side of her to be the safest.”
“And you can’t do anything for her?” She couldn’t see who was talking, but the voice sounded familiar.
“We’re trying.” Professor Valerian’s sigh was a full-body thing. “Please believe me, we are trying. But turning off someone’s innate power and Change is a complicated matter.”
Amantia propped herself up on an elbow. Somebody cared? Was it one of the other basement kids? She hadn’t seen any of them since she was brought out here. She’d heard the list of found survivors – people she knew, people she’d been living with for years – but that was it. If she’d been at all surprised by it, Amantia might have found it depressing. But she’d never been the safest friend to have.
“Not as easy as a glass of milk with breakfast, hrrm?” The second voice sounded amused. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to find out how her poison and mine mix. Although there’s a few people we could practice on…”
“No practicing. I know it’s hard, Zita, but try to be a good influence for once.”
Amantia sat up. Zita? She knew that name!
“No such thing,” Zita responded cheerfully. “But the food is okay?”
“Of course. I’m sure she’ll love your food. I’ll be just over the ridge, out of earshot.”
“Liar.” Zita’s tone didn’t change; she still sounded perky. “You’ll want to hear all of it. I understand.” She stepped up over the rise, carrying a picnic basket.
Amantia stood up. “Hello!” She waved, maybe too enthusiastically. “Hello, Zita!”
Zita’s razor-sharp grin settled into something more amiable. “Hi, you. Amanita, right? I guess you remember me from the mess?”
“It was a mess all right.” She wrinkled her nose. “Do you know, is everyone all right?”
“A lot of people are still in the infirmary.” Zita’s expression sobered. “This is the first time they let anyone come see you. I guess you’re poisonous?”
“Yeah, a little.” She touched the neckline of her wet-suit. “Some sort of poisonous gas. I can’t control it.”
“That’s all right.” Zita’s smile was broad yet somehow non-threatening. “I’m poisonous too. I brought a picnic.” With that apparent non-sequitur, she flopped out a blanket and began laying out foods. “They’ll let me come visit so long as I have a chaperone. And I figure, the more I visit, the more they have to think about The Amantia Problem.” She winked. “Which ought to motivate them nicely. They’re afraid of us, you know,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper. “They think my crew is insane.”
“Oou.” Amantia considered. “Are you?”
“Of course.” Zita popped a cracker-sausage-and-cheese pile into her mouth. After a moment, she explained. “It’s more fun that way. Especially when you’re poisonous.”
Amantia found herself grinning in response. “Sounds wonderful.” She took a few bites of food while she considered. “I could handle being insane and poisonous, especially if I had someone to show me how to do it.”
“That’s me. A good influence all the way.”
The sun was bright. Amantia blinked up at it. She remembered what it felt like; she remembered what it looked like, but that had been years ago. She’d never thought she’d live to see a meadow again.
She flopped down into the grass, feeling the prickle of the stalks through her wetsuit. When she’d first gotten sent to the basement, she’d really believed that someone, anyone would come up with a cure for her problem soon – just a week, just a month, just a year. For the last year, she’d really expected to die any minute now. The beasts had been attacking, they were stuck.
Now, she didn’t know. She was out of the basement. She was in the sun. She could – well, she already knew she couldn’t run away, but getting out of the basement was the first step towards any kind of freedom at all. She could do this. Maybe she could even learn how to stop killing people.
A light breeze picked up, brushing over Amantia. She rolled up into a sitting position and smiled. With her arms outstretched, she could pretend she could feel the breeze all over her body.
“That should be enough.” A soft voice barely reached her ears. Amantia stiffened and dropped her arms. She’d been left alone, but she had known she was being supervised. They wouldn’t trust her to be alone here they wouldn’t trust her at all.
Professor Valerian was standing just at the top of a low rise, not looking at Amantia. She looked sad, Amantia thought, and perhaps tired. “Just stay to this side of her to be the safest.”
“And you can’t do anything for her?” She couldn’t see who was talking, but the voice sounded familiar.
“We’re trying.” Professor Valerian’s sigh was a full-body thing. “Please believe me, we are trying. But turning off someone’s innate power and Change is a complicated matter.”
Amantia propped herself up on an elbow. Somebody cared? Was it one of the other basement kids? She hadn’t seen any of them since she was brought out here. She’d heard the list of found survivors – people she knew, people she’d been living with for years – but that was it. If she’d been at all surprised by it, Amantia might have found it depressing. But she’d never been the safest friend to have.
“Not as easy as a glass of milk with breakfast, hrrm?” The second voice sounded amused. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to find out how her poison and mine mix. Although there’s a few people we could practice on…”
“No practicing. I know it’s hard, Zita, but try to be a good influence for once.”
Amantia sat up. Zita? She knew that name!
“No such thing,” Zita responded cheerfully. “But the food is okay?”
“Of course. I’m sure she’ll love your food. I’ll be just over the ridge, out of earshot.”
“Liar.” Zita’s tone didn’t change; she still sounded perky. “You’ll want to hear all of it. I understand.” She stepped up over the rise, carrying a picnic basket.
Amantia stood up. “Hello!” She waved, maybe too enthusiastically. “Hello, Zita!”
Zita’s razor-sharp grin settled into something more amiable. “Hi, you. Amanita, right? I guess you remember me from the mess?”
“It was a mess all right.” She wrinkled her nose. “Do you know, is everyone all right?”
“A lot of people are still in the infirmary.” Zita’s expression sobered. “This is the first time they let anyone come see you. I guess you’re poisonous?”
“Yeah, a little.” She touched the neckline of her wet-suit. “Some sort of poisonous gas. I can’t control it.”
“That’s all right.” Zita’s smile was broad yet somehow non-threatening. “I’m poisonous too. I brought a picnic.” With that apparent non-sequitur, she flopped out a blanket and began laying out foods. “They’ll let me come visit so long as I have a chaperone. And I figure, the more I visit, the more they have to think about The Amantia Problem.” She winked. “Which ought to motivate them nicely. They’re afraid of us, you know,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper. “They think my crew is insane.”
“Oou.” Amantia considered. “Are you?”
“Of course.” Zita popped a cracker-sausage-and-cheese pile into her mouth. After a moment, she explained. “It’s more fun that way. Especially when you’re poisonous.”
Amantia found herself grinning in response. “Sounds wonderful.” She took a few bites of food while she considered. “I could handle being insane and poisonous, especially if I had someone to show me how to do it.”
“That’s me. A good influence all the way.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1045768.html. You can comment here or there.
A Change in Routine
inventrix‘s Let’s Pretend
Class is in Session
A Brief Reunion
inventrix‘s Unexpected Visitor
Lessons in the Dojo
inventrix‘s from RP logs
Education and Collars
Trouble in Paradise
inventrix‘s Mistakes were Made
Stolen
This story takes place here, the morning after “Stolen.”
A Reconciliation
Morning dawned with a blond head resting on Cya’s shoulder, the face away from her. She’d lifted her hand to tousle the hair before she remembered that this particular blond was new. Gwyn, whose father had named him both fair and a suitably Arthurian name. She moved gently, deciding she was going to have to see if he could handle casual touch eventually.
He woke at her fingers in his hair and made a small noise before he, too, came awake and went still.
“Easy,” she murmured. “You’re safe and you’re fine. You must have been very tired.”
“Yesterday…”
“Yesterday was a pretty crazy day. You got stolen, for one. I got shot.” She chuckled, because it was over now, and because Leo wasn’t here to fret. “Neither one happens every day.”
“Oh, good.” He tried a smile on her, and she responded in kind. He was skittish, but he wasn’t angry. “I don’t think I want to get stolen again.”
“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to get shot again. It makes Leo irrational, for one.” She leaned over to kiss his forehead. “Welcome to Cloverleaf, Gwyn.”
“I think you said that al- Thank you, Mistress.”
“Cya. I’ve never liked that mistress thing, no matter how many Kept I’ve had.”
“Cya,” he agreed. “Now what?”
“Well, I think we have breakfast, and then I give you a tour of my city, and maybe we get to know each other.” She hugged his shoulder gently. “Then we can work on what you like to do with your time.”
She noticed the way his expression went skeptical and was unsurprised. It would take time, but for now they could start with breakfast. “If you get some bacon started, I’ll make us eggs and toast. Then I can show off my city.”
She found herself grinning. She’d always liked this first part, anyway.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1045421.html. You can comment here or there.
I’ve been admiring Ana White‘s blog/how-to site for a while now. She breaks carpentry-based DIY and knock-off decor down to a very accessible level, and, even though I grew up with basic carpentry, I didn’t grow up following carpentry PLANS, so I really do appreciate this.
So when I looked at my pile of tiny and small art and looked at the wall in my girl cave, I thought a-ha! I bet Ana White has a plan for this!
And she did! $10 Ledges. I went a bit smaller and cut the length into 3 equal pieces – 3″ boards instead of 4″, because it’s a very small room. The lumber cost me $15, the paint is the same as the rest of the room, and glue and screws were around the house.
Dad actually helped me put them together and Mom helped me paint them when they were up this summer. And then, finally, a couple weekends ago, I put them on my walls and started playing with pictures.
…at which point I found out that Zazzle postcards are not quite right for 4×6 frames, sigh.
Not much shows in this picture, but the “L” is by kelkyag, the mermaids are by ellenmillion, the tiny picture is a drawing of Death that kissofjudas bought me, and the postcard is of Mackinac Bridge, from a family trip in my pre-teens.
(I collect postcards 😉
Next up: I bought two shelf brackets from Lee Valley to put a broader shelf on the other wall. Dictionaries and books I’m published in!
(I also collect dictionaries!)
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1045082.html. You can comment here or there.
Written to clare_dragonfly‘s prompt. Before Year 19 of the Addergoole School.
Shira Pelletier was having a bit of trouble.
“No, this is ridiculous.” The girl would not come out of her house, and had settled for talking to Shira through the tiniest crack in the door. “There is no way. I’m safe here. I’ve got food, water, the people don’t hate me… If you go away soon, that is. I don’t want to stick out.
“Maressa, I’m sorry, but if you don’t come with us, in a few months you are going to stick out far too much. Your parents -“
“My parents are dead. My parents are gone. They went off to fight the war. They left me, okay? So fuck whatever they wanted for me.”
“…I’m absolutely certain they wanted you safe.”
“Yeah, well, then they shouldn’t have left me here alone. They should have stayed.”
“Your parents…” Shira sighed. There were things she couldn’t say, not standing here on a formerly suburban street. “I’ll save that for another time. I know that you are safe here at the moment, but how long do you think that can last? Food, water – I don’t see many crops being planted, and you have no meat animals.”
“This is the burbs. Nobody knows how to plant crops.” Maressa threw up her hands, the gesture barely visible through the doorway opening. “Or, like, butcher animals, or anything. But they know how to store food okay. And everyone that ran off left something. We’ll be fine for another year.”
In another year, Maressa would have Changed. Shira swallowed, and dropped her voice even lower. “Maressa, do you remember your parents telling you stories about f—
“We don’t talk about those things here. We don’t talk about anything like that. We’re all normal. Human. Here.” She punctuated that with kicking the door. Shira sighed.
“Then come with me. I can’t promise everyone will be normal, but we can teach you how to plant crops, and how to husband animals – how to take care of them, that is, how to herd them and how to use them for food. And then, if you want, you can come back here and teach these people.”
Those that would have survived.
“Why me?” Maressa’s voice was still edgy, but she was about to give in. “Why not anyone else here?”
“Because your parents are the ones who set this up. And although you may hate them, they took some measures to provide for your future.”
“Why do you sound like that?” The door opened a bit further. “All fancy, like something out of a book?”
Shira allowed herself a small smile. “Because I am a teacher. And I would be honored to teach you.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1044971.html. You can comment here or there.
A Change in Routine
inventrix‘s Let’s Pretend
Class is in Session
A Brief Reunion
inventrix‘s Unexpected Visitor
Lessons in the Dojo
inventrix‘s from RP logs
Education and Collars
Trouble in Paradise
inventrix‘s Mistakes were Made
Stolen
Later in the same sequence, after Apollo has been given to Leo, after Leo gets sick of the two of them moping at him separately and encourages them to talk to each other.
“Hey, kiddo.”
Apollo was walking the walls of the city. Not just anyone was allowed up there, but nobody was going to keep the Mayor away, so Cya had climbed up to join him.
“Kiddo?” He looked back at her curiously. “First time you’ve called me that.” He slowed down his pace to let her catch up.
“Yeah, well. I try not to use terms like that with people I might be sleeping with. It just gets a little creepy.” She smiled crookedly, and hoped it wasn’t awful.
“But you didn’t.”
“Yeah, well.” Cya shrugged uncomfortably. “You weren’t comfortable enough being mine for me to risk it.”
“Risk?” His lips quirked.
“Risk.” She wrinkled her nose. “Someone who knew me well might say I’m risk-averse. I think, I think I was risk averse before I even went to addergoole. And then I learned how to minimize risk…”
“This from a woman who got shot stealing a slave?”
He’d learned how to be snotty without being mean. Another thing she’d have to thank Leo for. She smirked faintly. “You’ve been around us long enough to figure that one out.”
It took him a second. And then he nodded. “Martyrs,” he muttered.
“Leo does it so well, but someone’s always had to clean up after him.” She shrugged like he hadn’t been talking about her, and he smirked like he was getting used to evasions.
“I like having Kept.” It had always been something of a guilty pleasure. “But I like having Kept… and not feeling evil about it.” There was a story there, but it could wait for later.
“You’re not evil,” he protested. She smirked tiredly, and paused in her story to Find if there was any trouble on the walls. She could Find nothing, so she kept walking.
“In school, I picked angry boys, guys who would have gotten broken by the wrong Keeper, and I let them be angry all over me, because… well, because they could, and I could, and I didn’t mind it.” She shrugged, because she wasn’t going to explain how Cabal’s anger had felt like fire melting ice, how the way Howard had grumbled had felt like reassurance. “And then I picked people who looked lost, who looked – “
“Blonde and with horns and antlers?”
“Or skinny and dark. Go take a look at Kheper sometime.” She and Leo had joked about it forever. She had a type. She took a breath. “The point is, I got better at Finding, so I Found people that wouldn’t hate being Kept.”
“Blonde guy with antlers who doesn’t mind the collar? That’s a pretty specific set of requirements.”
“I have a pretty aim-able power.” She shrugged a bit. “I got used to low-risk Kept.”
It was a lousy explanation, but he seemed to be filling in the holes on his own. “Leo said you picked Kept you could help.”
She smiled crookedly. “I try. What Luke said… when I can’t Find one of my Kept anymore, it…” It hurt, like a plan she hadn’t remembered to make. “…it sucks.”
“I thought I was invincible,” he muttered. “And…” he thought for a long time before he spoke again. Their feet moved quietly along the walls. “I didn’t ever want to be under someone’s collar again. I kept expecting it to be like it was. And it wasn’t, and I didn’t know what you were waiting for.”
“And you didn’t want it, and you felt betrayed.” Cya nodded slowly. She knew about feeling betrayed. “You’re doing well with Leo.”
“I didn’t want to. But…” He shrugged awkwardly. “He wasn’t a stranger. And… He didn’t know what he was doing.”
Cya found herself laughing awkwardly. “Not the first time my plans have been the problem.”
He hesitated, his feet stilling, and looked at her. “Why did you give me to Leo?”
“Because I couldn’t help you. We couldn’t get past the bullshit to listen.”
“You wanted to help me.” He smiled a little, crooked, like he’d been watching the way Leo tended to smile – which he probably had. “So, uh. I think you did?”
Cya squinted at him, and then found herself smiling. “You’re a good kid, Apollo.”
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged, but he did hug her back. “Think it’s rubbing off on me.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1044549.html. You can comment here or there.