Archive | July 2018

Blog Post: Last Weekend with Friend Visit

Jul22

I had an Eseme visiting last weekend!

I hadn’t seen Eseme in five or six years (she’ll know the specifics; I just know it had been ~forever~).  So this was a very special occasion, and not just because she drove 8+ hours each way to see me (and the kitties).

(Not that it won’t be awesome if I manage to see her once a year, like we discussed!)

We greeted her on arrival Thursday night with homemade pizza and equally homemade ginger ice cream, both of which I’m rather proud of.  

Friday we let other people do the cooking — my favorite diner for breakfast/brunch, my favorite Thai place for dinner — and in between, because I live in the Finger Lakes, we went out and tasted at a winery, a distillery, and a cidery. (She drinks a whiskey drink, she drinks a winey drink; they skip the lager drink, she drinks a cider drink….)

Oh, and my favorite ice cream place.

Saturday, we spent approximately all afternoon shopping, most of that at Hobby Lobby (there’s only one in the whole state of Maine!) and then at our local ReUse center, which is similar to the Habitat for Humanity Restores ( https://www.habitat.org/restores ).  Between the two, I ended up getting, notably:

* Some Washi Tape.

(This is my new thing.  It’s endless)

(I mean… After we bought washi tape at Hobby Lobby, I went online and bought us both some at Ali Express.  Which, being Ali Express, won’t get here for like 5-30 weeks (yes weeks) so it will be a surprise when it gets here).

(for those of you going “what is this thing?”  – https://www.cutetape.com/creative/blog/2012/6/what-is-washi-tape – Although at this point, many people call anything narrow-ish and decorative and adhesive washi tape.  For instance, one of the ones I bought was a zebra-printed very thin duct tape. Definitely not of the same origins as Japanese paper.)

* Some clearance yarn (of course) and knitting needles.

* a frame for a mini I bought from @Fax

And then from the ReUse Center, another frame (later spray-painted black for my postcard from Antartica), a Holly Hobby plate for Merit (long story, but that’s a cat), and some more knitting needles.

So all in all I’d call that a win for a shopping trip..

We hit the Commons – this is something Ithaca is known for, an area of two blocks long that has been blocked off to car traffic and is just for walking and shopping.  We had a blast there, too (I believe Eseme got a tiny dragon or two and I got some vinegar) and then bac home for dinner and s’mores. (With a pipe torch!)

Phew!

All in all, it was an absolutely wonderful trip!  I sent Eseme home Sunday morning with a good breakfast, and I hope I get to see her again soon.

In the meantime, I can always mail her more washi tape…

Beauty-Beast 39: Clothes

Jul20

First – Previous – Landing Page – Next

🔒

Ctirad stood while his Owner walked around him.  He found that he had closed his eyes and settled into a waiting position. It was comfortable.  It was more than comfortable; it was pleasing. He liked being here like this.  He liked waiting for what Timaios would do to him.

That was new.  So much about all of this was new, but that was definitely a novel sensation.  He liked it, he realized; more than liked it, he was looking forward to more of it.

A hand brushed over his ass and he shivered.  “I want to show you off. Here, come with me and we will dress you in your new clothes.”

“They’re here already?”  He didn’t open his eyes, but there was a hand on his collar and that was enough to move with. Continue reading →

Bad Things Happen Bingo: The Hunter, I

Jul20

Count: ~4800
Chara(s): A Hunter with some demon blood (OC)
Pairing(s): N/A
Fandom: Org Fic – Fae Apoc xover
Prompt: Most Dangerous Game

So this.  This is a series of stories taking place in my universe, Fae Apoc, at the time just before the aforementioned apoc.  Portals are opening up to one other world at that time, and in this story, well, they happen to open up into a whole BUNCH of worlds. 

And from those worlds, a bunch of poor soon-to-be-victims-of-bad-things who bear some resemblances to fandom characters happen to slip through some portals.  And then bad things happen to them. 

Because that, after all, is the name of the Bingo.

Content warnings: violence, death, bondage, capture, drugging, visions. 

This is technically Chapter Two because I started writing this before I found the bingo.  Chapter One will return later. 

A. Intro

The team had found their portal – isolated, comfortable, close enough to a major road for shipping purposes.  They had set up their force of former soldiers. They had the cages.

They were expecting to catch just the would-be gods coming through from Elleheim.  People would pay good money to have a would-be god on a leash.

But then the portals started spitting out some interesting people.  People who didn’t think they were gods. People, as it turned out, from other universes.

The team was fine with that.  They’d sell them, too.

B. Hunter

Chase had been in the cage for three days and it was beginning to feel like a vacation.

He had done all the banishment rituals he could remember, though that was really his kid brother Dan’s job and, naked like he was, he’d been a little short on ways to draw any sort of warding circle or even a basic sigil.  He’d chanted bad Latin until the guards had put a muzzle on him; he’d tried every bar in the cage (twice); he’d tried the wooden floor and ceiling to the thing and found them surprisingly tough. Even with the sometimes-sporadic powers he still wasn’t supposed to have, he couldn’t crack even the wood ceiling.

He’d done everything he was supposed to, so he took the opportunity to rest.  The cage was big enough for him to lay down; it came with a pillow and a blanket, and that meant the only thing he had on his plate was trying to convince his captors to take the damn muzzle off so he could be done with a liquid-slurry diet.

Except this time the handlers were coming with the prods, and they weren’t bringing dinner.  He stood and moved towards the back of the cage. There were three of them. He could take three of them easy.  He’d taken more than that when he landed here, before they knocked him out.

Thing was, was it a smart thing to do?  If he cooperated, maybe he’d get more leeway.  Maybe they’d take the damn muzzle off. Maybe he’d have an opening to get out of here.

It might be a vacation, but he was starting to miss his kid brother, and, besides, there was shit to do back home.

“Kneel, hands behind your head,” the middle handler told him, sounding bored.  Well, they couldn’t have that, could they? Chase grinned at them – tried to; the damn muzzle didn’t give him a lot of expression leeway – and gestured like he couldn’t hear them.

“Last warning, or it gets unpleasant.”  Nobody raised their voice at all. The middle handler stepped forward.  “Kneel, hands behind your head, or you make the trip on a dolly with a tranq dart so far up your ass the needle’ll be tickling your eyeballs.”

Well, when you put it that way… Chase knelt, his hands behind his head.

“See?  I knew you could learn.”  The left-hand one stepped in and cuffed Chase’s hands – to the damn wooden collar, of course – while the other two kept their weapons trained on him until he was cuffed, shackled, and then lifted up into the waiting van. Continue reading →

Kaijune: How Cuute

Jul19

The worst thing you can say about an enemy is “Aw, how cute.”

Not because you risk offending them – we’re talking someone who is already an enemy, for one, and in this particular case, we’re talking about things that would have to go through a whole translation process to sort that out, because they definitely don’t speak English.

No, because the moment you say cute, you’ve stopped thinking of the thing as an enemy and have started thinking of it as something to hug, to protect, to coddle.

This was a big enough problem when the things the news insisted on calling the Lilliputians invaded.  Well, visited.  They weren’t as small as the ones Swift visited in his Tales, but they came up to about an average adult knee and they were what my daughter called “chibi”: their features looked exaggerated and childlike.

But that was them.  When the rabbits appeared, well, then we had really big problems.

Really, really big problems.

Have you ever seen a grown adult soldier arguing with their officers that they can’t shoot the bunny?  Have you ever seen a tank sat on by a bunny big enough to start nibbling on the flag hanging off the twenty-seventh floor?  Have you ever seen the hairball from a hare that size?

Okay, so back up a bit.

It hadn’t even started with the Lilliputians.  It had started with some sort of humanoid-like grey people with giant eyes, and it turned out they ran an intergalactic tourist agency – I have been told, time after time and in painstaking detail, that they are not tourists, that tourists is a provincial back-water Earth concept, but people who are not scientists travelling to new places to see how they live sounds a lot like tourism to me.  Anyway, the problem with tourism (or splet!clogk, or irri♫arren↓) , as I’m sure anyone who lives in a picturesque place could already tell you, is getting the damn tourists to leave.

So may be the Lilliputians weren’t invaders, and they did go home when we convinced them that their visas had expired, but the rabbits…

Look, nobody even knows if they’re sentient.  They don’t talk to me, they don’t talk to the consul, the Grey Folks aren’t even sure how they got here. But they might be cute and they might be fluffy and now nobody wants to shoot them, sure. But the amount of shit a building-sized rabbit leaves is pretty impressive, and let me tell you, that ain’t cute.

“splet!clogk” and “irri♫arren↓” aren’t necessarily meant to be pronounced by a human mouth but I was thinking that the ! in splet!clogk is a tongue click and the gk makes sort of a choking noise; the ♫ is a whistle and the ↓ is for a drop in pitch. 

Teamwork in the Bear Empire

Jul19

First: Running in the Bear Empire
Previous: An Inn in the Bear Empire
Next: Captive in the Bear Empire

🐻

A movement somewhere outside her window woke her in the middle of the night.

It’s the storm, she told herself, but Carrone had woken, too.  The noise from the storm had settled down to a quiet rainfall. There was very little wind at all, no sounds of sleet – but something had scratched across their wall.

The walls were more secure than they had been, but it wouldn’t stop someone from –

She rolled to one side of the bed and off as Carrone did the same on the other side.  The wrong side, too close to the wall. Just as they rolled, a dart went flying over the bed – it would have hit Carrone in the neck, if he hadn’t moved. Continue reading →

Thimbleful Thursday: Vent

Jul18

Content warning: Barbie nudity discussed, technology/human hybrid

“The trick has always been balance.” Idella Passmore had that dangerous combination of skilled enthusiasm and charisma; the tour group was listening intently, despite having no idea what she was talking about. “You want sufficient technology to retard or stop decay, of course, but people want to be people. This particular model involves a cybernetic torso with a RealSkin(tm) cover. Most of the organs have been replaced, but the brain remains and the heart continues to pump blood. In some cases, we choose to keep the uterus; in some we replace the heart with a technological marvel like our HeartPump2000.” Continue reading →

Haunted House 18 – In the Henhouse

Jul17

First: A story featuring a male keeper and a female Kept.
Previous: The Yard

🌳🏚🌳

Mélanie froze. Oh, dear wasn’t the sort of phrase that normally led to angry owners, but there had been that one…

That had been a long time ago.  And that was not Jasper. “Oh dear, sir?” she breathed, as quietly as she could and still hope to be heard.

“Be careful, Mélanie, but come around to the side of me, if you wish.  Just be ready to duck…. ha.”

Those were not particularly calming instructions, but Mélanie did as she was told, of course, slipping to one side of Jasper to look at the chicken pen.  Hutch? No, the little building to the right was the hutch. But she didn’t know what the pen was called.

Whatever its name, the pen was one of the tidiest parts of the whole yard – nice, big, several roosting places, a mesh roof overhead.  Which made the thing sitting in the middle of the pen even more confusing. Continue reading →

Spoils of War 10 – Out of Hell

Jul16

First: Spoils of War I: Surrender
Previous: Future

It was another hour before they cleaned up the dishes from their dinner, packed up everything in their packs, and lay down together on a bed that was surprisingly comfortable.  Nikol made a soft noise as she settled in. This was – well this was good.

Aran laughed.  “You can’t be surprised that it’s nice.  You were just telling me about putting curtains on your tent, right?  You’re good at making a place feel like home.” Continue reading →