Archive | January 2016

The Water

Jan8

To sauergeek‘s prompt. Modern era, unknown setting.

The people of Greenville had been pleased to finally get a proper water processing plant. The wells had been producing sporadically for decades now, and the Crooked Lake, while beautiful, was too often green and not the tastiest water by far.

The company that installed it came in shiny trucks and cars with cleansuits and many instruments. “Looks like an alien invasion:” Bernie McDonald wasn’t the first to say it, but he was the loudest.

“Or some sort of government takeover. Men in black.” Gennie Simmons was far quieter than her cousin, but when she spoke, people listened.

“Nonsense, Gennie, they’re in white,” scoffed Bernie. But he, loud as he was, and she, in her retiring way, kept an eye on the workers and the cars, the machinery and and intake tubes, the chemicals and the filters. They were retired, decades past retirement, actually, like half the town. They had time to spy, and they spied thoroughly.

The problem in all that spying was, it wasn’t something the water plant people were putting in that was the problem. It was what they were taking out.

Want more?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1044390.html. You can comment here or there.

Turnabout, a fic-start

Jan8

To [personal profile] kissofjudas‘ prompt: Addergoole, maybe 2 years into the apocalypse.

It was a week into the Keeping that things went south.

If it had been on the first or second or third order, the second day or third, Vercingetorix might have freed her and tried to get a promise not to mess with him in retaliation. But no, it was a week in and even if he’d wanted to, she’d learned too much.

“Go do the dishes, and then work on your homework.” It’d been a long day, and they were both tired; her magic class was exhausting, which he might have remembered if he’d been thinking straight.

“No.” Glaucia looked at him as if challenging him to say something. “I need something to eat, I’m falling over, and I don’t have any homework. Why don’t you do the dishes?”

And, much to his surprise, Vercingetorix had found himself washing the dishes.

To his further surprise, he found his Kept sitting in the armchair, knees to her chest and hands over her face, delicate fins sticking up behind her thumbs.

He took her to Caitrin’s, of course, because he remembered Changing without the pain meds and would wish that on nobody. And in the cuddling and reassuring and watching her little fins and webs and scales come in, Vercingetorix pretty much forgot about the thing with the dishes and so did Glaucia.

The next time was a couple days later, when she started arguing with him about sleeping arrangements. “If you don’t like it,” he bellowed, “sleep on the floor!”

“No! I don’t see why I should. You sleep on the floor!”

And not only did Vercingetorix find himself curled up in the corner of the room with a spare pillow, not entirely sure what had happened, but he felt miserable, like he’d just yelled at his Keeper.

In Vercingetorix’s defense, this sort of thing rarely happened, and he’d never heard stories of it before, not even rumors or whispers. The Kept bond was a Law; you couldn’t break it. Thus, it took him a little while to figure out what was going on.

It took Glaucia a little less time, because she had far less preconceptions to work from. Her Keeper had been able to make her feel miserable and tell her what to do; now she could share that. One made as much sense as the other.

Once she’d figured it out, it was easy to figure out that she should subtle with it – not all his orders were annoying, not everything he did was unpleasant, so she pushed back only when she found what he was doing onerous or annoying (or when she was having a bad day).

If she’d stayed with being sneaky, it might have taken Vercingetorix even longer to figure out what was going on. But since she was a curious-minded individual, she started experimenting with the bonds of her new trick. And when she started pushing things, Vercingetorix finally went from “something is weird here” to understanding what was going on.

Of course, by then, it would prove almost impossible for him to release her.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1044159.html. You can comment here or there.

A Week in Alder – what have I been doing?

Jan8

Patreon
The theme poll is closed, and January’s theme will be Addergoole!
I have been working on this month’s serial post. Werewolves!

Serials
Edally continues apace! Enrie keeps digging into things that she really shouldn’t…
If you haven’t checked it out, start here: Edally Acdemy is a series of stories, following three new students as they work through their life and their plans for the future in a steampunk boarding school. It belongs to the same world as last month’s Lexember conlang, Reiassan, and to my novel-in-progress, Rin & Girey.

Conlang
I’ve started on Languary, an idea started by [personal profile] becka_sutton ([tumblr.com profile] languary), creating a language for a new setting.

Fun
I wrote a series of stories of Boom in Cloverleaf, playing off of some roleplay [personal profile] inventrix & I are doing, itself playing off an old story I wrote of Cya and Boom.

There’s also this AU that came off of that series of stories.

Discovery is set in Edally-Era Calenyen, telling the story of a ship from Homeland reaching Reiassan

Prompt Calls
My December Prompt Call is going to stay open until it stops being fun 😉
The theme is “Prompt something fun for me or fun for you.”
Stories include
Planning for Spring, space/colonies
Dinner, modern/threesome
Bound Up, Fae Apoc/Modern
Warm and Cozy, modern/creepy

I also still have this Addergoole in the Apocalypse “give me ideas” call open.
And Your Little Friends Too comes out of this call

I reviewed 2015

Offline/not posted
I also:
Wrote 1000 words on an fdom cyberpunk paranormal romance novella
Wrote 1300 words on a secret project
Wrote 1300 words of submissions and 300 words of commissions (Commission out for character approval)

For a grand total of 11,681 words from Jan 1-7th!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1043482.html. You can comment here or there.

Languary Day Tomorrow: A start on conjugation

Jan7

Okay!

Now I have to Drop the Drop!

Which means I had to figure out that “present continuous” tense existed.

I have nuba, which is the root for drop.

Without figuring out all of the conjugations at the moment, -othe is the ending for:

Continuous present tense, third person singular.

But the whispers are plural!

Okay, then -othed.

the -a on nuba goes away, and you get Nubothed ˈnəb ō ˌthed

We’re going VOS so:

nubothed ssussusser

Whispers Drop

Edit: I said VOS, I thought VOS, and then I wrote it SV. Sign. Fixed.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1043362.html. You can comment here or there.

Languary Day 7: Plurals

Jan7

If you’re following this, you may have noticed that I’m fascinated by plurals with grammatical number.

So in making a plural to make the words Whispers Drop, I decided to make several plural forms.

-er is the most commonly used, and indicates a generic plural.

-ara indicates part of a group, “those four students,” for instance.

-ore indicates all of a particular thing.

And here’s another thing to add in!

Whisper is ssussu.

To make this plural, we’ll repeat the first consonant (in this case the only consonant): ssussusser.

(Rule, courtest [personal profile] thnidu: “When pluralizing, if the word ends in a vowel copy the first consonant onto the end before adding the ending.”)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1043120.html. You can comment here or there.

Languary Day 6: Whispers Drop

Jan7

Okay, I want to name the language:

Whispers Drop

But this means I need to make:

1. Verb conjugation

2. pluralization

3. the words for whisper and drop

Okay, starting out easy:

ssussu, the first word in my gibberish, is Whisper.

nuba is going to be some form of drop

Okay, got that done. I’ll do the next part tomorrow!

runs off

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1042883.html. You can comment here or there.

Stolen, Doomsday/Fae Apoc funfic

Jan6

A Change in Routine
[personal profile] inventrix‘s Let’s Pretend
Class is in Session
A Brief Reunion
[personal profile] inventrix‘s Unexpected Visitor
Lessons in the Dojo
[personal profile] inventrix‘s from RP logs
Education and Collars
Trouble in Paradise
[personal profile] inventrix‘s Mistakes were Made

He was, not to put too fine a point on it, confused and disoriented.

This morning, he’d been waiting in a cage at the slave market, ready to be sold, because his master – who was a bit of an asshole – was sick of him.

Then the crazy woman with the wide smile had grabbed him, assuring him that everything was fine, they were stealing him.

There’d been a rather wild moment where they tortured and threatened his master into passing his ownership over, the woman and her male companion grinning and acting like this was all a game.

And then his new owner had gotten shot and everything had gone sideways for a bit and the man had stopped smiling and then everything had gone even more sideways a few times. He wasn’t entirely clear on any of that until he and a third man who’d appeared at some point had been stuck on a porch, and the man had declared he was going to get cleaned up.

His new owner was bleeding, possibly to death, and this madman wanted him to get clean. He’d argued, but the madman was a teleporter, and he’d found himself physically moved – over and over again – into a bath until he’d relented and let himself be cleaned.

And fed.

And finally, finally, a box on the wall had rung and the teleporter had agreed to take him to his new owner.

~

“Come in, come on.” She was being carried by a tall man with horns, and she looked wan but no longer dying. She gestured up to her door, somehow making it an invitation, and the telporter pushed him inside, like he wouldn’t have gone on his own.

The horned man set her down on a couch, where she proceeded to settle herself as if it were a throne. “Thank you, Apollo. Go back to Leo now.” Her voice went soft. “Take care of him for me, okay?”

He bowed and left, seemingly in a hurry.

She turned her attention to the teleporter next. “Namir, you’re not fired. Unless you want to be, in which case, you’re still not fired, but we’ll talk about it in a few days. Go home, get some rest.”

“But…”

“Go home, get some rest.” Her voice was strained, but it still had steel behind it. “Try to stay away from Leo for a few days.”

He left. The woman gestured to the floor in front of her. He knew what that meant, and knelt there, facing her.

“Hey, kiddo. Sorry for the mess there.”

He bowed his head and didn’t answer. How did you answer that?”

“What’s your name?”

He cleared his throat. “Gwyn, Mistress.”

“Gwyn.” She chuckled. “Of course it is. Look at me?”

He looked up at her, pale and freckled, her shirt ripped open where the crossbow bolt had gone through her, but whole, uninjured.

“Yeah, I can see it. From Addergoole?”

“No… what’s Addergoole, Mistress?”

“Mmmn. A place you probably have antecedents. Anyway. Hello, Gwyn, nice to meet you. I’m Cya du’Red Doomsday, and you belong to me.”

“…Yes, mistress.” He swallowed. “Thank you.”

“‘Cya’ will do.” Her fingers ran around his bare neck. “Namir took that awful hawthorn collar off, I see.”

“I tried to stop him…”

“It’s all right, it saves me trying to Work hawthorn half-dead. It wasn’t on for long, then? I don’t see any blistering and only a couple pricks here and there.”

He shook his head. “The auction house requires it.”

“Of course they do. All right. Standing orders: don’t attack me or mine, do your best not to do damage to anything that belongs to me. Loose guidelines: Stay in the city, try not to get in too many fights. Those are breakable as needed for your safety, mine, or that of innocent bystanders.”

Gwyn blinked at her. “Mistress? Err, Cya?”

“I know what I’m doing, I assure you.” She winked. “I’m afraid showing you around and things are going to have to wait. Urrm. Why don’t you help me to my bedroom, and indulge me in a nap, and we’ll worry about the rest later?”

This day was definitely not turning out like he’d thought it would. “Yes… Cya.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1042413.html. You can comment here or there.

January Theme Poll Closed!

Jan6

The January Theme Poll is Closed!

The Winner is Addergoole!

Check out my Patreon here:

https://www.patreon.com/aldersprig

and sponsor for just $1/month to read all stories, or $5/month to prompt.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1042067.html. You can comment here or there.

Languary Day CAUGHT UP! Start on grammar

Jan5

Questions from Zompist’s Language Construction Kit

This is a work in progress and also a learning exercise. I don’t have all – even most of – the vocabulary, so pls. be patient.

Also, it’s a worldbuilding exercise at the same time…

Is your language fusional, agglutinative, or isolating?

I think I’m going to go with fusional, in part to try something utterly different from Caleyen. It also gives me the option of moving one of the dialects to analytic or agglgglgluglug… *cough* Agglutinative.

How do you form inflections?

…Not sure yet!

I’m /thinking/ prefixes. It suits the way the sentences feel to me. But on the other hand, I’m fonder of suffixes for comprehension. That could be because English is my first language and I’ve only studied romance languages….

After a bit of research: Suffixes it is! Mostly.

Side note: Negation appears at the sentence’s beginning or end, depending on context. That really goes in the Sentence order post.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1041683.html. You can comment here or there.

!AU! The Hawk in Cloverleaf, continued. !AU!

Jan5

An alternate-universe[AU] continuation of this
Cya had in her possession an uncomfortable and flappy Hunting-Hawk.

She’d considered the possibility of getting her hands on the Administration of Addergoole before, but in none of her situations had she ended up with a mostly-willing Luca Hunting-Hawk sitting at her kitchen table, cutting up fruit for a tart like a normal Kept.

Cya was in over her head and she knew it. He wasn’t a kid. He didn’t need…

Everyone needed something. She pushed aside her pastry – handy having a Kept who could steal all the heat out of her marble rolling surface for her – and sat down across from Luke.

“Tell me,” she began, and quashed the surge of guilt she still got for forcing answers out, “what do you need?”

He mantled. She’d have laughed about it, except he clearly was trying to control it and failing, which was kind of nerve-wracking and a little sad. “I need a bigger knife.”

He’d dismantled seventeen peaches into paper-thin slices. She was going to have to can peaches, or bake pies for the entire neighborhood. “I think you’ve cut enough peaches.”

He pushed the knife over to her. “I don’t need anything. I was just fine…”

“Tell you what.” She made her voice gentle. He might have centuries on her, but she knew this particular dance far better than he did. “I’ll ask you again in a week. For now…” She eyed the pile of peaches. “Why don’t you get the sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice, and I’ll start on a few more pie crusts.”

There was always something with the pie, every time.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1041566.html. You can comment here or there.