Archive | July 2016

Summer 2016 Giraffe Call Stories written~

Jul20

I have finished (much slower on the second round) the Giraffe Call stories, although I am still working on the tips-and-commissioned stories. You can find them all at this tag:

http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/tag/giraffecall:+result

or on LJ:

http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/tag/giraffecall:%20result

Final numbers for the second round are:

$16 in donations, no new Patreon patrons, 2 new friends/followers/bloggites…. just $9, 2 patrons, or 2 new friends away from the goal.

All in all, I’d say it’s a good run, and I’m that much closer to a new tablet (poor tablet met the road. Well, sidewalk).

P.S. I’m still really proud of the splash icon I got to use the first round:

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1144236.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Ashes in the Rain – for the Summer Giraffe Call

Jul19


Written to book_worm5‘ prompt here to my Summer Giraffe Call Round 2

Jorin found the new guy kneeling in a field, staring at the waste of his wheat, his face dry but the expression on his face as heartbroken as if he’d been sobbing. Jorin stifled a sigh; he could remember when he’d been the new guy. This place was hard, harder than any other place Jorin had ever lived, and it wore on you.

“Hey.” He kept his voice mellow. “Hard luck. The whole field?”

“It was just barely holding on. The weeds here are nuts. But I’d just gotten a crop really going…! And then that damn fire.” He looked down at the cold, damp ash; the hard rain had doused the fire, but too late for the wheat.

Jorin knelt down next to him. “This place is hard.”

“That’s what it says in the brochure.” The guy’s voice cracked — bad joke or the start of more tears, Jorin couldn’t tell. “It’s hard. But you get to try. They didn’t tell us it would all go up in smoke.”

“They don’t. They don’t know, not really. Company wonks, that’s all. The people who plan this stuff.” Jorin’s brochure had said this is your second chance and he’d believed it. “But it’s what they’re willing to give us.”

“So what now?” New-guy ran his fingers through the dirt. “That was all I could afford, and it’s all gone.”

“Now you learn about this place.” Jorin ran his fingers through the dirt until he found one, a seedling just starting to crack. “See? This place is hard and the wheat is harder. But after a fire… the seeds sprout. Give it a week, and your field will be green again.”

New-Guy swallowed. “You’re serious?”

“It’s kind of like us. We got hit with something — all of us, we really did.” It was stupid and poetic, not Jorin’s usual bag. He said it anyway. “But you stick us here, hard cases all of us… sometimes we sprout.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1143943.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

5000 miles… or maybe just 7

Jul19

♪ Well I would walk a whole three miles
and I would walk three miles more
Just to be the gal who walked six miles…♫

Yeah, it doesn’t quite scan, and it was seven miles anyway… we went on a hike this weekend!

We met up with an old friend, who we used to hike with all the time, and a-hiking we went; we parked one car in Dresden, one in Penn Yan, and we hiked the Keuka Lake Outlet Trail from end to end!

(then we ate fried food and had ice cream, but that was awesome, too).

The trail follows an old railway bed and, unlike most things in the Finger Lakes, it’s relatively flat – good for getting back into hiking. It’s pretty, it’s smooth, and it even has portapotties.

The neatest thing for me, though, was the locks. I grew up on the Erie Canal; I’m used to locks. But I’d never seen them on a creek before! The ones on the Keuka Outlet Creek aren’t functional anymore, but even the ruins are neat to look at.

I think we’ll be going back… just as long as we have someone to park at the other end. 7 miles is enough 🙂

♪…who walked those miles
to fall down on the floor
Da da lat da (Da da lat da)♫

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1143778.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Searching for Answers, Chapter 3 of The Portal Closed

Jul19

After: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1007793.html and http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1007910.html – for the Finish It! Bingo. Not technically a finish, per se, but another chapter.

“If there are other portals, it stands to reason that someone has heard of them.” Clarence came into their hide-out with his arms loaded down with books and his backpack heavy with more.

Barbara set up the camp light and cleared the main table to give them a workplace. “Like that old woman, oh, dear…. Dorothy. Dot Garrington. The one who told us when she had been to Ombrion, and we thought she was putting us on for the longest time?”

“Or,” Diane said more softly, “Donald Jackson, the one that Verdana told us about. Went missing here — I still have the clipping. Because he died in Ombrion.”

“Do you think there’s another portal here? In [town?] If we have to go further out, it’s going to take some doing, especially with the school administration getting so concerned about us.” Barbara wrinkled her nose. Mr. Richardson was doing his best to intervene on their behalves, but the school administration had started paying far too much attention to the four of them.

“Well, that’s the first thing to look into. We know about Mrs. Garrington, and we know about Donald Jackson. Verdana confirmed those. So we have to find anyone else. I’ve got twenty years of old newspapers from old Mr. Dellard’s garage, and gloves, because old Mr. Dellard is not the tidiest.”

“How is that not going to bring suspicion?” Ralph demanded.

“Because Mr. Dellard paid me to clean out his garage,” Clarence shot back. “Because we need spending money, and we’re not old enough for jobs — and besides, I’m too short for the counter of anything retail here, and I don’t think they’d hire me as a fencing instructor.”

Barbara did not giggle, although she did smile a little bit. They were all shorter than they had been, but Clarence, they had discovered, did not have his growth spurt until eighteen or nineteen. He, of course, found the entire thing completely unfair, but there was not much one could do about biology in Ombrion, and less here on Earth.
“Jobs are a good point. I could pick up some babysitting work. The Hardessy triplets are nothing after dealing with…” Barbara trailed off softly. There were things they never talked about. That was one of them. “Well, anyway. I could babysit.”

“I think the branch library needs someone to work afternoons,” Diane offered, “and there’s more research time. After we read through Clarence’s papers here.” She slid on a pair of gloves and picked up a notepad.

Barbara did the same. “So, we’re looking for Dots and Donalds. Strange stories and missing people?”

“And maybe missing time. You remember when we made the paper and all got grounded for a month and a half?”

“Urgh. Yes.” Barbara glared at the paper. That one had been Clarence’s fault, but it was ancient history in so many ways now.

Ancient or not, it probably didn’t stink as bad as these papers. Barbara opened a window after the first thirty-year-old paper, but that didn’t help much until Ralph opened another one on the other side of the building. It meant they had to be quieter — their little hideout might be out of the way, but people did still walk by here — but since all they were doing was reading, that wasn’t all that difficult.

“Got it!” Ralph crowed out. “Look, here…” he dropped his voice to a whisper as all three of them glared at him. “Here. I mean, probably not the only one, but Millie Dioli, here. She was missing for a week, and they assumed she’d fallen in the river.”

“People fall in the river all the time,” Clarence argued.

“Yes, but they don’t come back talking about strange things she saw in the library. The Dolan library,” Ralph added, with heavy emphasis. They looked around the building they were in — the “old, abandoned library” that had “Dolan” carved very clearly above the front door. “She said she’d been in the library the whole time, and that she’d only been gone for an hour.”

“Nnng.” Barbara curled her knees to her chest. “They didn’t institutionalize her, did they?”

“No, although she was, um, ‘soundly punished for her lies’ and eventually told them she’d been off playing pirates and lost track of the time.”

“If she’d been ‘playing pirates’ in the Bay of Sorrows…” Clarence pursed his lips. “That would explain the time shift.”

They all shuddered. The Bay of Sorrows seemed to work differently from the rest of Ombrion in all ways, and it was infested with pirates that they had never been able to get rid of. “So what happened to her?” Barbara leaned forward. “If she didn’t get institutionalized…”

“I brought some phone books.” Clarence pulled them out of his bag. “Although if she married…”

Diane shook her head. “After ‘playing pirates’ with those pirates?”

They all shared another shudder, and Barbara pulled Diane close to her in a sisterly hug. “Probably not,” Clarence allowed. “Dioli… Dioli… All right, she’s in the phone book. But we should keep looking, too. If she’s only been to Ombrion, she won’t be able to help us find someplace else.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1143339.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

The Florence Charm and Captain America, a fanfic/Aunt Family crossover, Part II

Jul18


After Part I

Arranging a trip to New York City was neither a quick endeavor nor one done simply. Eva had to get time off of the job that her family still thought she ought to quit. She had to talk Hadelai into letting Beryl come with her — which, in the long run, meant telling her sister what was going on.

Telling Hadelai came with risk, of course. If Haddy told their mother, then she was likely to tell everyone. The same problem if anyone told their sister Fallon.

In the end, Hadelai, Beryl, and Eva ended up going on a “family trip” to NYC, with a promise to the rest of Haddy’s children that they, too, would get a later trip and a blithe answer to the grannies and cousins who wanted to complain that “Even an Aunt needs a vacation once in a while.”

They could not actually tell her no — after all, no matter what they liked to pretend, the Aunt was supposed to be in control, not the grannies and great-aunts and so on — and so eventually, the fuss stopped. By then, Haddy and Eva had their time off, Beryl had been excused from school for a long weekend, and they’d booked their train tickets.

On the train ride to NYC, they perused scans of the oldest extant Aunt diaries, including hand-copied versions of even-older books that had since fallen into dust despite careful packaging. Haddy raised eyebrows at Aunt Sarah’s most racy interludes, and then made her daughter and sister both raise their eyebrows with some of her own stories. The young businessman sitting in the next seat moved once in Utica, and then again an hour later.

“What are you going to do?” Haddy asked, her voice soft. She shot an uncomfortable look at Beryl before looking back at Eva. “I mean, are you going to tell him? What are you going to tell him? How are you going to get in to see him?”

“I… good question. Good questions.” Eva wrinkled her nose. “I brought the diary. I think I’ll show him the part where she wrote about him, and see if anything sparks — poor choice of words — brings up a memory. I should have brought — well, no, I shouldn’t have.” Eva frowned. “I thought about it, but I didn’t want to risk some sort of imprinting.”

“Both you and Beryl would count, wouldn’t you?” Hadelai looked even more uncomfortable. “Women — well, female people — within a marriageable-age?”

“Technically, yes.” Eva pursed her lips. “Even though no, miss Beryl, you know better than to be aiming in that direction for quite a few years. No, I put together a charm that essentially says ‘nope, not me’ for both of us. I want to scout this round, not end up coming home with a Captain America baby.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what Asta was thinking…”

“I think,” Beryl offered, “she was thinking ‘man, he’s brave, handsome, and strong. I wouldn’t mind spending a little time disqualifying myself with him, but, oh, darn, there’s a war on, and that won’t do. Well, I’ll put him aside for later like a can of peaches.’”

Hadelai stared at her daughter in horror, but Eva stifled a laugh. “That does sound like our family. It even sounds like Aunt Asta, I have to admit. All right. So she stored him for later, and it worked better than it ought. The question is — he’s not some trinket someone shoved up in the attic or between the walls — don’t ask, Hadelai, I can just say that the Aunt House does not have a problem with mice or insects — but we can’t just leave him on the shelf and hope the next Aunt knows how to deal with him, or sell him at a yard sale. We have to do something about the Florence Charm.”

“We have to meet him, first,” Hadelai pointed out. “From the pictures, I have to say I might agree with Asta here. But he could have horrible BO or a curse on him, you know. We could want to remove the charm and flee as soon as possible.”

“We’ll find out soon,” Beryl pointed out. “We’re here.”

~

It was Beryl’s first time in New York City, but she didn’t rubber-neck. It was only her mother’s second time, but she didn’t, either. Eva, who had been there many more times, was both amused and pleased by the determined set of mother-and-daughter jaws, and the way they very intentionally didn’t look around.

“There’ll be time for seeing the sights later,” she reassured them. She had put herself between them, mostly so she could keep an eye on both while navigating them through the packed sidewalks. She didn’t like the city, but there were many things to draw a young archivist here. “Now, let’s see.” She held up her cell phone as if checking a text and floated her small will-o-wisp spell behind it. “Interesting. Definitely not in Avengers tower right now, let’s see. Hrrm. This way.”

“That’s a neat little spell.” Beryl bounced up next to her Aunt. “I mean, I can see — Mom, don’t make that face.”

“You’re not the Aunt, Beryl.”

“And? The power runs through the family. The Aunt just holds the weight and bulk of it, not every little sparkle and ember. That would be silly.”

“He’s in this coffee shop just down the road,” Eva interjected. They were going to go on all day otherwise. “Now… are we ready?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1142805.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Soul Fire… (A continuation for the Summer Giraffe Call)

Jul18


Written to rix_scaedu‘ commissioned continuation of Insta-Cure from my Summer Giraffe Call.

Aspen pulled the candles and fake logs from the fireplace and whispered a quick spell, unstoppering the chimney. “Fire,” she murmured, pleased with herself. “All right, Toph, Betsy, there are eight candles in there. Arrange them in a half-circle around the fireplace, and then we’re going to put you in the middle, Toph, and we’re going to focus on the problem.”

“No, uh-unh.” He shook his head emphatically. “That’s how we end up with the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.”

“No, no. That’s how we ended up with the nice shield over this block, remember? It’s not always like Ghostbusters, bub.”

Topher sighed loudly. “All right, all right. We can focus on the problem. Which is me, yeah? Me is the problem?”

“Your lack of self-esteem is the problem, Toph.” Betsy frowned at him. “You keep acting like you’re somewhere down below the totem pole, and it’s ridiculous.”

“Hello, have you met you? Either of you? You’re like the most impressive women in your class, probably in the state, and likely in the world. Me, I’m… I’m me. Topher George, loser extraordinaire.”

“You see? That. That’s what I’m worried about. Okay. Here’s the last candle and here’s the actual flame. And here here’s where we write it on parchment.”

“So we, like, we’re literally burning up my flaws?” Toph stared at the parchment in unwilling awe. “And this actually works?”

“Well, the book I found it in says it works, and it’s a good one. Not the kitties-and-puppies book,” Aspen hastened to add. “So yeah, I thought we’d do all three of us, but we can focus on Toph first. And then Betsy and I will be clear-headed if we need to fix something really fast. All right.” Aspen lit the fire in the fireplace and lit the candles. “Topher, you do the writing. Betsy and I will do the chanting and the focusing. Ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he allowed.

“Good. Betsy, you come in on the second repeat.”

“Got it, boss.”

The chant was easy, repetitive, the Sumerian coming smoothly to their tongues after the number of rituals the three of them had performed. They closed their eyes as Topher wrote a word on the parchment and tossed it into the fire.

The flames surged, dancing higher than they had fuel for, and then vanished. Only Topher’s eyes were open, so only he saw the flames actually dart up the chimney.

“Asp? Were the flames supposed to become a little pixy thing and run off with all my flaws?”

Aspen finished the chant. “‘The flames will take them’ is what the ritual says.” She opened her eyes. “How’re you feeling?”

“Mostly… like I want some donuts.” He stretched and wiggled his fingers. “What? Don’t look at me like that, Asp. It’s not like hating myself colored everything I did. I mean, okay…” He trailed off thoughtfully. “Hunh. Well. I guess it feels a little different.”

“Oh, good. I mean, I was thinking maybe it didn’t work or maybe it really was like the Stay-Puft marshmallow man and now you were going to crave donuts all of the time, and that would have been awful, I mean, at least kind of awful…”

“Well, to be fair, I already craved donuts all the time, it was just that I was… hunh. I wonder what a gym membership costs. I wonder if I can get a part-time job that doesn’t suck. What d’ya think, Asp? Barista, maybe? Someone around here has to need someone to work for them, and why not me? I mean…”

Betsy and Aspen shared a look. “Well,” Betsy allowed quietly, “this isn’t too bad, so far.”

“You know… I’ve wanted to know something for a long time, and I figure, you can both kill me for this if you want, but you only live once, right?” Topher looked between the two of them and grinned. “And you two are the only two I’ve ever really wanted, but I guess I figured I wasn’t strong enough for you or smart enough for you, but I’m not all that dumb and I’m crafty where I’m not strong and, well…” His smile got sly and mischievous. “Threesome?”

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1153016.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1142558.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

12: The Terror of the Plains, a continuation of a fanfic of Narnia and Valdemar

Jul15

first: A Door in the Wall
Second: On the Other Side of the Door
Third: The Call Comes Again
Fourth: New Travelling Companions
Fifth: Complications and then Complications
Sixth: Stranger Things
Seventh: A Change and Changes
Eighth: But Not A Return
Ninth: The Gods Not Tamed
Tenth: The Tiny Queen Arises,
Eleventh:The Gentle Queen Awakens

They left the tavern on that solemn note. Polla, Susan could tell, was attempting to hide a limp. She moved until she was between the woman and the mass of the crowd, and smiled as she saw Peter flank Polla on the other side.

The woman, in turn, said nothing, but Susan noted that she let herself lean a little more heavily on her cane, and that she still sighed with relief when they had reached the inn’s stables. “You’re good kids.”

“You’re not the first war veteran we’ve encountered.” Edmund’s answer was casual, so casual that at first Susan thought he’d gone too far. “It’s hard to be out there with strangers seeing a weakness like that, right?”

Polla didn’t answer for a moment. She busied herself with the saddle on her dun mount, a small and flat saddle far less complicated than the ones the Pevensies had been using. There were not so many straps on it to take such time, and yet she was still working on her saddle when Susan had finished saddling her own mount.

“It is hard,” she agreed, so quietly that the jangle of tack nearly covered her voice. “And it’s frustrating. I am not weak, but that’s all they see. A limp, when I used to be the Terror of the Plains.”

“The Terror of the Plains?” Lucy asked, in her high child’s voice. Polla turned from her tack to look down at Lu.

“It was advertising, more or less. Telling everyone I was far bigger than I was. Telling them we were bigger than we were — my merc crew,” she continued, before they could ask. “We were tough and a little wild, but we were a small crew. So we talked ourselves up until we nearly believed it.” She swung herself up into the saddle. Seeing her there, her limp momentarily unimportant, Susan could believe her having been the Terror of the Plains.

Susan swung up into her own saddle. “I — we — know a bit about being seen as smaller and weaker than we are. It can make you want to throw rocks, can’t it?”

“Susan!” Peter was, of course, scandalized.

“Well, it can. It always has, Peter, whether it was you and Ed forgetting that Lu and I had brains of our own, or Mum and Dad thinking we were… we were just children.” She looked directly at Polla. “We’re smaller than we are, as Lucy once said. And so we know all about being looked at as lesser and… incapable.”

Polla caught it. She coughed. “Then the gods look favorably upon Valdemar after all, don’t they? You’re a sharp one — Susan, it was? You remind me of my old Captain.”

“Thank you.” Susan smiled broadly. “There are far worse compliments than to be reminiscent of a mercenary captain. Some of…” our best friends and finest warriors, my favorite lover, the ones that won that war for us… “We have known some fine mercenaries over the years.”

“I begin to think that your years are counted a little differently than your average gal-on-a-horse counts them.”

“We count every year twice,” Lucy put in, chipper and patently insincere. “That way there are twice as many birthday parties, and we can grow up twice as fast.”

Polla chuckled. “You’re quite adorable. But don’t think I don’t see how you sit your saddle, young miss.”

Lucy slouched deliberately and exaggeratedly. “Dunno whotcher talkin bout, lady?” She ruined it by grinning, which led to Polla barking out a laugh. Even Edmund chuckled, the quiet sound that he normally reserved only for family.

“You’re fun, too. Not sure I’ve ever met people that were clever and kind and fun.”

Lucy straightened up. “We’re still kids,” she answered innocently. “We’re supposed to be fun. And clever, well—” she shrugged. “We might be pretty smart. There’s a reason we were chosen, of course.”

“Of course. Valdemar does some pretty strange things though, young Lucy. And sometimes they are not the best chosen. You’ll forgive me for trusting my own judgement more than theirs, I hope.”

“Only as long as you forgive us for trusting ours.” Lucy’s smile was so bright, people often forgot to take offense even when she was being patently offensive. “We were brought here to do a job, but people seem very reluctant to let us do it. I think it’s making my brothers and sister a little touchy.” She stage-whispered the last as they walked their horses out onto the road.

“And not you?” Polla raised her eyebrows.

“Oh, no, I never get touchy. I’m the cheerful one. That’s what I’m called, Lucy the Sunny.”

“Valiant,” Edmund interjected, lazily but with a point hidden in all the silk. One again, Susan remembered how much she’d missed this side of her brother — and of her sister. “They called you the Valiant. And you earned it.”

Lucy blushed and ducked her head. “They did at that, sometimes,” she muttered.

Polla let the silence hang a few minutes, their horses’ hooves clopping on the cobbles as the only sound. “They,” she said, finally, the single word punctuated by a birdcall.

“They,” Edmund repeated, in the same smooth tone.

“You were brought here to help with our little problem.”

“We were sent,” Susan answered.

“Susan…” Peter began, but she shook her head.

“We were called for — and we were sent. The rest is a wee bit complicated, but we come from a long way away.”

“A long way away, hrrm? Well.” Polla smiled, a strange smile but not a bad one, “let’s hope it turns out to be worth the trip, then.”

Thirteen: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1145146.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1142393.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Landing Page: Aerax/Expectant Wood

Jul15

The Aereaxerer archipelago hovers high above the Nevilla Forest, wobbling ever so slightly on stems up to a mile high. This unlikely feature is the home of the Expectant Wood serial story, available to Patreon readers.

Setting
These posts open to all
The Serial Family (Patreon)
Name the Serial Family (LJ)
The Serial Islands (Patreon)
A five-minute map of the islands (LJ)

The Serial
These posts available to Patreon patrons

Nimbus and her family are on an expedition, exploring the Center of Aereaxera, the biggest island in the Aereaxerer archipelago. But something is amiss at the center of their world…!

Chapter One: Trouble at the Stamen (Patreon)
Chapter Two: The Stamen End (Patreon)
Chapter Three: The Slippery Stamen-End (Patreon)
Chapter Four: The Sharp Exit (Patreon)
Chapter Five: The First Rescue (Patreon)
Chapter Six: The Cut in Aereaxera (Patreon)
Chapter Seven: The Chute in the Tree

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1109232.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

The Expectant Wood, Chapter Six: The Cut in Aereaxera

Jul15

 Chapter One: Trouble at the Stamen

Chapter Two: The Stamen-End

Chapter Three: A Slippery Stamen-End

Chapter Four: The Sharp Exit

Chapter Five: The First Rescue

Summary of All Aerax 


Chapter Six: The Cut in Aereaxera

Didda didn’t like it. He didn’t have to say it; it was obvious in the way his lips were all squished tight together and the way he moved, like if he could take out enough of his anger on the thorns of Aereaxera, he wouldn’t shout like he wanted to….

🍂🍂🍂

The Expectant Wood follows young Nimbus down into the depths of strange Aereaxera, an island floating on a tall stem, high above the land below.  Follow her adventures as she and her family – her Didda and Mem, her sisters Billow and Shining Pearl – go places nobody else has gone and meet strange people and stranger plants.

Expectant Wood is available to all Patreons! 

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1141887.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable