Okay.
I want to write as many approx. 150-word monsters in the next 5 days as I can stand.
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Now taking prompts and/or requests
My Patreon theme this month is “return of the light” with a bonus theme of “blood and heart”
Bonus points (2 monsters+) for prompting within one or both of those themes. Continue reading
We went down loaded for bear and packed up for mid-winter.
What we found wasn’t nearly as cold as we expected – not by almost 5 degrees C – and was very occupied with pleasant animal life. Small things, fluffy, sweet-looking.
Of course, we’re so close to the pole and so close to “summer” here that we’re in a period of long days and long nights. And the sun just set.
Those fluffy creatures don’t look so friendly in the twilight, let me tell you. And I’m wondering if we prepared quite well enough.
This planet is larger than Earth but not amazingly so, and it is dryer than Earth but not horribly so.
What is really notable is how flat it is, with only a small amount of variation between the high and low spots, and how quiet it is. There is little axial tilt, but enough to make it almost homelike; the tides ride far up on the beaches.
There is civilization here, although they appear to live in low buildings made mostly of wood. Stone and metal appear in short supply.
We sent down a polite greeting probe.
We were uncertain at first glance if this planet could sustain life. Its lang masses are almost all at its poles, with only a scattering of small islands like a crooked dotted line between them. But the southern continent – almost as large as Africa, if considerably closer to round – has greenery and what appears to be some sort of animal life.
We were reluctant to send down a team, but the readings were so good, it was hard to resist. A small colony might be very happy here.
This planet is lightly inhabited – it looks like the equivalent of early Iron-age technology. We won’t bother them, although we will note to visit every 100 years.
The strange thing here is that the continents and landmasses are bilaterally symmetrical, eerily so – and in sharp contrast, all of their buildings, structures, even their roads are defiantly, aggressively asymmetrical.
We would blame it on some strange trend, but even the ruins we’ve seen share the same lopsided style.
And yet their seas could be drawn with a compass and their mountains with a ruler.
The glitter, it turns out, is biological.
We landed, and everything was fine for the first two days. We noticed no dangers in the air, nothing on the surface or the rainwater that would cause us issues.
We sent Spifio out as out canary, and after two days Spif was glittering.
The thing is, there’s nothing wrong with Spif yet, not as far as we can tell, except the glitter. And the way words seem to glitter in the air when Spif speaks.
So far, our filters are holding out. We’re giving Spif a week to see what happens with the glitter.
If only Spif didn’t SPARKLE so much when we said he had to stay outside.
We all sparkle now.
After five days, we let Spifio back into the enclosure. The only ill effect seemed to be the glitter hanging everywhere, and the animals seemed much more interested in sparkling at Spif than in eating him.
Turns out the glitter has a pheromone which says “one of us”, except that there’s several different pheromone sets.
Good thing they sent us down with a splittable pod, because I can’t stand the sight of Spif, Lee, or Garana now and Tellie almost strangled Lee last week.
There was a period of time we will not speak of.
During that time, several things happened, of course.
We have narrowed the glitter down to five lines, each with its own pheromone. We’ve also developed a blocker which allows us to tolerate the other pheromones.
In addition, we have found that a particular combination of the glitters has a healing effect – if you don’t tear yourself apart trying to get the stink off of you.
This planet is fascinating, but 5 years cannot come soon enough.
Garana has figured it out! It took a few false attempts and seventeen animals in cages – three didn’t survive – but we have found a way to block or replicate the effects of the glitter hormones.
For the first time in half a year, I hugged my wife. And then we went about the more complicated business of determining how these pheromones work on this planet.
But there was a lot of hugging.
First: The Hidden Mall – a beginning of something
Previous: Back the Way They Came
The Hidden Mall has a landing page here: http://www.lynthornealder.com/verses/the-hidden-mall/
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Abby stared at the door. “Hold on?” she asked the Livs. It won’t go where it did. Well, nothing had yet. We can’t go home. What did Abby want more than anything? Home?
She wanted to feel safe, and to have a warm place to sleep and a real meal. She wanted to see sunlight and feel it on her face.
She opened the door. Continue reading
First: http://www.lynthornealder.com/2017/12/03/negotiation/
Previous: http://www.lynthornealder.com/2018/01/26/bodyguard/
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The car ride lasted longer than he thought it ought to, winding through the city and into a neighborhood where there were actual lawns, through a gate they had to buzz through and into the detached garage next to a big house or a small mansion. “All right. No orders on behavior but I’m going to warn you, we do have a cat, she liked jumping on people, and she is often far too sharp.”
“Sir.” Leander raised his eyebrows. “A cat?” Continue reading
First: Running in the Bear Empire
Previous: Dying in the Bear Empire
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They left the wagon near the front of a farmhouse, making sure the horses were comfortable and had plenty of grass to munch on, and set off on foot, each of them carrying a bag. As soon as they reached an intersection, they turned off the wagon-road, heading towards the foothills.
Dusk came on them sooner than they’d have liked, the air turning cool as the sun ducked behind the mountains. Deline began looking for a reasonable place to stop for the night. Continue reading
“MDom Not Asshole” continues, now with a name
First: A story featuring a male keeper and a female Kept.
Previous: After a Warm Meal
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Jasper stared at her. “Mélanie, I promise you, it is not a joke.” The air shivered with the feeling of his oath and the house seemed to shift minutely. “I swear it to you. I intend to treat you like an associate, not like a slave, and if I have given you any indication otherwise, I sincerely apologize.”
“You… you bought me,” she pointed out, in a whisper that was barely a breath. “And you-” Continue reading
It had been Slek’s turn on the sky-scope, so it was Slek who saw the spaceship settling above their atmosphere and Slek who noticed all of the readings of a determined scanning. Not the Periln; the instruments read differently, enough that Slek was pretty sure they noticed there were people left on the planet.
If the Periln had noticed, they would have sent down a cleaning crew.
This ship… just scanned, scanned again, and left. Slek swore and cursed many of their ancestors and descendants before writing it all down in the log.
The greeting probe was bland. It spoke in a monotone that seemed to carry no inflection at all.
Lior(red-phasing-to-blue/greenish tips) listen/watched 3 times but there was nothing of hue or shade. How to understand it, then? Lior took it to the [green-on-the-water-blue place], but even there, they were baffled.
They began to prepare a reply, shaded as neutrally as possible.Sending it back was easy. But how to communicate with such BLAND people?