Archive | May 2016

Acquiring Students, a ficlet of Cya/Doomsday

May22

This is set a little over a decade before Cya Keeps Leo. Well, the end bit is a decade-plus; the ‘finding’ parts are earlier.

There were things Cya looked for when doing student recruitment.

She looked for slaves she could justifiably rescue, children born into slavery that would Change if given the right environment and would thrive or at least survive at Doomsday. She looked for children that would need rescue, kids that were living in fae-unfriendly places that risked being slaughtered when – or if – they Changed.

She looked for post-Addergoole conceived children born to Addergoole students, “third kids”, they called them.

She looked for children with unusual powers – her own power, which showed up immensely rarely; teleportation, which was uncommon and very useful in this post-collapse world; mind control, which was thankfully rare and required careful handling; telepathy, although she had only found one of those in all the years she’d been doing this.

She also looked for kids who were the right age, whose parents were fae or Faded, who could make it to Doomsday or who could accept her help moving to Doomsday.

And in all cases, she started looking for kids who were much younger than Doomsday age. She wanted to be sure that the parents knew about the school in time to make a decision.

Sometimes she found them early. Sometimes she didn’t find them until it was almost too late. She hadn’t figured out the patterns yet.

Sunny, she found when she was five, running around the family ranch doing child-sized errands while carting three kittens in the kangaroo-pouch of her jacket.

Kerr, she found three days before school, working in a landfill mine on a chain gang with twenty other children. She set her jaw and made a note to come back soon to deal with the slave-owner.

And Aron she had to keep finding; his family-group kept moving around. But she convinced his mother the same way she’d convinced Sunny’s family – with shameless bribery.

There were others that year, children from as far as her teleporter could reach, and one she’d made him make three jumps to reach. It was a full year of twelve, and, considering the mix, Cya quietly gave Ascha a raise.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1113172.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1109856.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Buffy: the Invitation (an Addergoole Crossover), Part IV

May20

Part I: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1096503.html
Part II: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1100922.html
Part III: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1104619.html#cutid1

“Look, all I’m saying is, we should just tell them thanks but no thanks. This isn’t the sort of thing I’m going to do. It’s not the sort of thing I can do. And besides that, well, why would I want to go to some stuffy old boarding school when I can stay here in stylish, fun Sunnydale?”

Buffy was still complaining as they loaded up Giles’ car Friday after classes, and Giles was still ignoring her.

“You tell ‘em, Buff!” Xander offered in dry parody of support. “I mean, who wants to leave Sunnydale, where the skies are sunny and the vampires are sprouting? I mean, why would you want to somewhere without demons? Oh, god, take me with you.”

“That was the idea, yes. As much as I loathe to say it, you may be quite useful on this trip, Xander. If for no other reason than being exactly what you are.”

“I’d say thanks, but I’m pretty sure that was an insult very badly pretending to be something like a compliment. Come on, Will, is that all you’re bringing?”

“Laptop, check, clothes for two days, check. What about you, Xander?” Willow set her bag in the trunk, wedged carefully between Buffy’s bags and Giles’ suitcase.

Xander held up his gym bag. “All I need. I travel light. I’m the original light-traveller. I am…”

“Forgot to pack, hunh? Do you have enough?”

“Enh, I can buy a toothbrush and some socks when we stop for gas. Funny thing, gas stations. They seem like they’re made for the unprepared.”

“Ahem, indeed,” Giles cut in. “All right, everyone in—”

“Shotgun!” Xander shouted.

“Too late, bozo, I called shotgun like hours ago.” Buffy slid into the passenger’s seat. “If I have to do this thing of ridiculousness, then I’m going to do it in style.”

“No fair! Giles, tell her that’s not fair. That’s not how the ‘shotgun’ rules work, as written in the Shotgun digest of Fourteen-oh-eight!”

“I most certainly will not. Get in the car, now, all of you.” Giles pinched his nose. “Whatever have I gotten into?”

“Did they even have shotguns in fourteen oh eight?” Willow scooted into the backseat and fastened her seatbelt.”

“It was a very progressive digest at the time.”

With that, they were off. Giles spent more than half of the first leg of the trip bemoaning his willingness to get into a car with three teenagers at all, and much of the rest of it telling Buffy that, no, she did not have a Spidey sense telling her something back in Sunnydale was going horribly wrong.

“I could patrol here, you know.” Buffy was pacing back and forth in the hotel room. They’d gotten two rooms in a place that was surprisingly high-rent for Giles’ protestations of educational poverty, Giles and Xander in one room, Buffy and Willow in theory in the other, but currently wearing a hole in the first. “There could be vampires here. There could be demons.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s magic.” Willow was sitting in lotus on what was, in theory, Xander’s bed. “It feels a lot different from Sunnydale. Funny, everything started feeling different the moment we hit the city limits.”

“Neat what not being in a Hellmouth will do for you. Why don’t we go see what they have instead of a Bronze here? Maybe a Silver or a Gold, you think?”

next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1112216.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1108537.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

A Patreon Bonus Post: oro’cy’Sweetflower

May20

This story is from March; I wrote it but couldn’t quote get it to work out quite the way I liked it, so I wrote something else.  But here it is: a glimpse at a test-Keeping in Doomsday Academy. 

🌸The collar was new and stiff-feeling, even though Enguerrand knew that there was supposed to be a Working on it to soften it.  He tugged on it anyway.  “Are you sure I’m going to be welcome?”

Faris draped an arm around Enguerrand’s shoulders.  “Certain.  For one, any plus-one is welcome at a cy’Sweetflower party, and for another, you’re mine, remember?  Anywhere I can go, you can go.”

“I’m new to this,” Enguerrand reminded his Keeper nervously.  “You did your own test-Keeping last year.  This is my first time.”
Continue reading →

Bonus Post: oro’cy’Sweetflower

May20

This story is from March; I wrote it but couldn’t quote get it to work out quite the way I liked it, so I wrote something else. But here it is: a glimpse at a test-Keeping in Doomsday Academy.

The collar was new and stiff-feeling, even though Enguerrand knew that there was supposed to be a Working on it to soften it. He tugged on it anyway. “Are you sure I’m going to be welcome?”

Faris draped an arm around Enguerrand’s shoulders. “Certain. For one, any plus-one is welcome at a cy’Sweetflower party, and for another, you’re mine, remember? Anywhere I can go, you can go.”

“I’m new to this,” Enguerrand reminded his Keeper nervously. “You did your own test-Keeping last year. This is my first time.”

read on…

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1108401.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Private Party, a story of Stranded World, now up on Patreon for patrons

May19

The story that began with this little series…

A Wink…
Nothing Could Possib-lie Go Wrong (Summer)
Places One Doesn’t Go (Winter)
At Home (Spring)
Sight and Sense (Autumn)

…is completed here on Patreon.

The man glared at Summer through the tilted fence panel. He wasn’t a pleasant-looking man; he had stringy hair and a weedy beard, a greasy, pallid complexion and notable body odor. But he was an important man, at least at the moment. “This is a private party!”

Summer’s cheeks were flushed and she was just about ready to die. She’d gone through this fence before — with her mother, when she was very young, then later with Winter and Autumn, and later still, all five of them together. She’d stepped a little sideways, and… what had gone wrong this time?

She coughed. “Sir, I’m sorry… (read on…)

Pledge now and read all my stories!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1108032.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

#ThrowbackThursday: Alone Together

May19

May 19, 2011: [community profile] dailyprompt: “eight line poem” and “I want to be alone.”
I wrote something with placeholders for names and, as I went… I realized that the placeholders made more sense than names:

“I want to be alone.” [3] stared down at her notebook, the pencil limp in her hand.

“Now, honey, you know it don’t work that way.” [2] cuddled her briefly.

“It oughta,” she sighed.

“Now don’t let the bosses hear you talking that way,” her teammate scolded. “They’ll start thinking you’re defective, or, worse…

continue reading Alone Together here.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1107768.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Grandpa-to-Me Cooking

May19

There’s a rage, it seems, for Farm-to-Table dining; there’s a few restaurants open in Ithaca right now that tout it and it gets play in some blogs. In short, it’s local food delivered to local consumers – in restaurants, it’s high end stuff made with low-food-miles food. I find it an interesting movement, but I live in the Frozen North, and I like my oranges, and my fresh produce in December, and so on.

There’s also – as we found out when we were taken out to a fancy place for dinner for our birthdays in Troy a few weeks back – a trend for buttermilk-fried ramps right now. And let me tell you, they are delicious. Ommity nommity tasty, with just enough onion flavor. We bought some ramps from our local farmer’s market and tried it out – so good

But to bring this around full circle, trendy things are pricey, and ramps have a very short growing season and are in fashion right now, so much so that people fear overharvesting.

Enter my grandparents’ farm, and the small forest there that my parents harvest for wood. And a visit to meet with my other (surviving) grandmother at my parents’ place 2 weekends past.

And my mother just happens to say “oh, would you like some ramps? We can go dig them.”

Let me tell you, grandpa’s-woods-to-table tastes even better than farm-to-table.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1107496.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Private Party – A Patreon Story

May19

This story of Stranded World began as a series of connected vignettes on Dreamwidth, all of which are collected here; the story then continues to an actual conclusion of sorts. 

There was a man at the festival with an eye-tattoo that winked.

Autumn hadn’t been sure the first time. There were several beautiful pieces of ink wandering around this ‘fest – it was pushing a hundred degrees out, and everyone was wearing just about as little as they could get away with. And there was this man, topless and wearing short khaki shorts and Birkenstocks, and the eye centered on his spine had a perfectly-shaded iris. And then it was closed. And then there was the pupil again. Continue reading →