This is a ficlet/Vignette to Eseme-mi’s suggestion, of Callista from my Addergoole:TOS serial after she leaves Addergoole.
Callista had a hard time in school and an abusive boyfriend, which is glossed over but important in the story below.
Also important: she has six arms. See her description here.
First: The Hidden Mall – a beginning of something
Previous: Copies
All three Livs were staring at Abby. Abby was feeling rather like, if she could, she would stare at herself.
“Are you talking about – collecting?” Liv-Old looked a little horrified. “Do you know how obvious you would be?”
“Do you know how obvious we are anyway? We’re alive, we’re not plastic, we’re not robots; we stick out pretty much every place we go. Having five or six or an army of us, well. It wouldn’t be Aslan, but it might give us a chance.” Continue reading
It’s World-Building June! So I’m building Worlds! Aerax/Expectant Woods over on Patreon, and Bear Empire and a new thing here!
It’s also June WorldBuilding – so we’re getting two sets of prompts. After I exhaust the answers I’ve written, I might just default to Inspector Caracal’s questions.
Well, I’m still posting. Sometimes.
The Bear Empire is, as it sounds, an Empire. It is not the largest Empire. It’s not even the largest Empire I’ve written.
It is ruled by a Emperor or Empress, a role which is chosen from a small pool of available candidates – these include governors of areas or of subject matter (the governor of trade, of foreign relations with Dekleg, with Halor, etc), the children, spouses, and family of the last emperor, especially those who have been given a position of authority or responsibility along with their title-of-relation, and generally three people picked from the population as potential candidates, usually by those listed earlier in the list.
The pool is chosen by the pool in a voting process which can last months. In one situation, the pool is known to have lasted five years, during which a woman not part of the pool (the down-spouse of the former Empress’ equals-spouse) ruled the country. A governor from the Lynx territory is credited with finally nominating her into the pool, at which point she became the first laundress to become Empress (as known, at least) and the first unanimous vote of the Imperial Conclave.
Ruling the empire is a group affair. The Emperor has a privy council, a voting council, and a speaking council.
The Bear Empire is still primarily on foot- and horse-based travel. While riding on horseback is common during the summer month, during the winter time, carriages, stagecoaches, and other such enclosed conveyances are more common.
The Empire has two competing empire-wide stagecoach companies which will take you just about anywhere in the Empire; in addition, there are several smaller companies that focus on a single area. There are also two lines that only handle border crossings, taking either the one bridge or the most-established ferry across the wide river between Dekleg and the Empire.
When your feet/hooves are tired, river and coastal boats are common for both freight and passengers, with boats travelling the three long lakes (“the Scars”), the major and minor rivers within the nation, and the coast from the glacial wall to the northern edge of Dekleg.
The Lynx Mountains also have a series of carts, something akin to a ski lift, which lift people up a large mountain and then back down into the middle of the mountains, generally on rails and run by steam and magic.
Questions? Thoughts? Tell me!
First – Previous – Landing Page – Next
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“Ctirad. Ctirad, my darling.” A click; the screen went blank. Another moment; there was a hand over his eyes, another hand on the back of his neck. “Ctirad. Hear me.”
He swallowed. He could breathe. “I. I hear you, sir. I hear you. Master.”
“No, my darling. Not that. Your sir, I will take that. But Master is a title I haven’t earned, not from you.”
That was strange enough to shake a bit of the fog away. “Sir?”
“Ah, well.” Timaios’ tone was… rueful? “I did say I’d accept that. Ctirad. I’m going to move my hands. Can you tell me what happened?” Continue reading
First: Running in the Bear Empire
Previous: Arrows in the Bear Empire
Next: An Inn in the Bear Empire
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Deline counted down on her fingers. Three, two-
“Oy, you in the old Pattane house! Come out with your hands up. I know you’re trespassing there, and I’ve every right to shoot you, but if you move slowly and ain’t try nothing, I shan’t but warn you on.”
“That….” Deline whispered quietly, “is not a Deklegion bounty hunter, or if she is, she is very good at mid-Fox-lands dialect.”
“Ain’t try nothing?” Carrone muttered. “Want to shoot him anyway?”
Deline stood up, to a chorus of swearing from Carrone. “No harm meant,” she called. “The storm lit on us something fierce,” oh, it had been a long time since she’d tried this dialect. “an’ nothing but our little tent to keep us from the cold. We ‘bout to take ourselves on to somewhere else, we were, when your arrow said hello.” Continue reading
First: A story featuring a male keeper and a female Kept.
Previous: Assignments and Plans
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“Ah, Mélanie.” It was as if Jasper had read her mind. “It will all make sense to you eventually, I hope. Either that or you will start throwing dishes at me and demanding that you go somewhere else, which is also a possibility.” He shifted like he was going to stand up and then sat back down. “Please, at your leisure, finish your meal.”
She looked at her food and, slowly, began eating. It did taste good, certainly better than anything she’d been eating before she came here. Of course, she’d made it, but she’d made it with fresh ingredients and the help of a cooperative kitchen. Very fresh ingredients… “Do you steal food as well?”
Now, why had she asked that?
“Well, I have chickens, and I might have had to go out and steal some, but they came with the house, so I didn’t have to. The rest, generally, I trade stolen goods for. I try to be more like Robin Hood and less like some evil taxman; for one thing, if I steal from the poor, the house gets very cranky with me. For another, I get really cranky with myself.” Continue reading
originally posted Jun 14, 2018 on Patreon⭕
Mr. Reginato had been teaching 10th-grade advanced mathematics for a very long time. A very, very long time, but the old paper records were long since gone and, since students enjoyed his class, he didn’t seem to be a line-item on the pension fund, and the school’s test scores in mathematics grade 10 and above had always been superb – or at least as long as people knew Mr. Reginato had been there – nobody was going to talk to him about retiring.
As a matter of fact, they were paying him, it appeared, approximately $100 a year, which absolutely couldn’t be correct, but that was the number that the accountant had in her files, and nobody really wanted to ask her any questions either. Continue reading
First: Spoils of War I: Surrender
Previous: Hostile
Aran was staring at her. Nikol wished she had a real answer for him, but she didn’t think he’d like knowing that she’d spared his life on a whim.
She shrugged instead and took a big bite of her own food. “Yeah. I’d had enough. Me, alone, I’m not enough to take them down, but I might not have been the only one to run, either…. what?”
He was staring at her. “You want to… take down… the Mountain?”
“Don’t you?” She took another big bit of her food. “Not like, today or anything. But yes. I would like to destroy the Mountain eventually.”
“Is that why you-” His gesture was unclear, but she had a pretty good idea what he was talking about.
“No.” She shook her head and finished her bite of food. “No. I took you because it was that or kill you, and I was sick of killing.” Continue reading