Archive | December 2018

Haunted House 30: Care

Dec22

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

🌳🏚🌳

“Anan, I’m not going to – I’m not going to do that.  For one thing, I don’t think he can live without those.  And for another thing – ew.” The brute sounded, MĂ©lanie thought, both worried and squeamish.  How could she be squeamish when she’d been planning on taking Jasper home and torturing him?

But she definitely sounded it.  “I mean, ew. And, well, if I do that  – then he won’t be able to tell us anything, or to agree to anything.  Anan, are you feeling okay?”

“Mm’fine.  M’
 more than fine.  Wonderful. Everything is wonderful.” Continue reading →

Running in the Bear Empire 27: Climbing

Dec21

First: Running in the Bear Empire
Previous: A Place
Next: 28: Blood

đŸ»

The question hung in the air between them.

Deline had started it because he wouldn’t stop about the “wife of the emperor” business, no more than some courtier trying to curry favor or some spy trying to dig up information.  She’d finished the question because she found herself curious, even though she was aware it wasn’t exactly a nice question.

Carrone cleared his throat.  He looked at the next hill before them, looked back at her, and started walking.

Deline followed, setting a pace that wouldn’t leave her looking at the back of him the entire trip.

At a very narrow flat spot, just barely big enough for the two of them, he paused.  “Obviously you think I’m good enough for that,” he pointed out, his eyebrows raised as if challenging her to deny it. “How many nights have we spent together already? Continue reading →

Lexember – Technology

Dec20

Time for verbs!

Or just a single verb


We’re going to start with the concept of to count, to sum up.

This is a very old word, first recorded as someone counting their sheep.

fuap is the root word.

fuaplu began as “one who counts.”  Now it means, well, “computer.”  That is, a machine.

BUT from there we go in two directions.

boe (bowie) comes from an ancient word meaning small and now means tiny.  That would be boefu – a microcomputer.

On the other hand, you have the really big, massive things used to grind huge amounts of information.  We have noen (No-en, like noel), from an ancient word meaning great.  So a Noenfu is a megacomputer.

Bonus: noenbeajue, megacorp.

oh, and “tek”, technology, which comes from gaoz, “craft,” and –mɛdio, the study of.  and now is back to Gaoz meaning “technology, things someone can technomance, things that use electricity.”

Speaking of, I have enough words left on this monster to contemplate electricity.

We start with the ancient word – a loan-word at that, peumbas, -as being the ending for “forces that are not quite known.”

This word originally meant bright light, as far as we know.  It is now the root word for all things electrical.

The Fading, the Forgetting – the Remembering

Dec20

This is a story of Changeling: the Dreaming, although there is very little of that setting that you need to know to read this. 

In short, at least in older versions of the setting, when changelings reach a certain point – age often helps – of banality in their lives, they fall into a stage where they forget their fae souls.  But their human bodies live on…

✹

The temperatures were over 100F.  There was a drought on that had been going for more than a month.  The city had been in and out of water restrictions since late May, and the sun was searing down as if it was trying to bake everyone who dared to go outside.

And on a street in a neighborhood where the police always went in twos and preferably in threes, a hydrant was spraying water all over the sidewalk and the road.

Seven children from toddler age to teens were dancing in the water.  Normally, the police would chase them off, close the hydrant, and maybe make stern noises at the oldest of them.  But this time, they were dancing with two grey-haired people who were definitely old enough to arrest.

Hell, their retirements might be old enough to arrest.  Continue reading →

Funerary Rites 34: Teeth, Hands, Hips

Dec19

🔑

Senga balanced on her toes, kissing Erramun.  There was a split second where she thought he wouldn’t respond before he kissed back, pressing his throat against her hands.  As she drew on the kiss, letting her thumbs brush against the tattoos she’d inked into his skin, he put first one hand and then the other on her waist to brace her.

She snaked one hand around to the back of his neck and drew out the kiss; he pressed his hand against the small of her back, holding her to him.  She caught a breath and stole a glance at him; he had closed his eyes.  He leaned in towards her; she kissed him again, her fingers all pressing into his neck.

At the moment when she thought that her toes might give out, he lifted her up.  She wrapped her legs around his waist and kept hissing him, pressing her whole body against his.  They were still wearing quite inconvenient clothing; she wanted to do something about that, but that would require either that she stop kissing him or stop touching him.  Possibly both. Neither were acceptable.

He turned slowly around, so slowly she almost didn’t notice what he was doing, and set her on the bed.  A moment later, he set her on the bed and, very slowly, disengaged.

Senga opened her eyes and made a soft noise, not quite a complaint.  He froze.

“I think,” he murmured, “that Mistress-” Continue reading →

Advance Notice: 10K Livewriting Day

Dec19

Hello all!

On December 26th, from approx. 8 or 9 a.m. ’till the same in the p.m. (Eastern time)*, I am going to open up a google doc (or something similar) and start writing.

I’m going to be aiming for 10,000 words.

I will be working primarily on one of my two current novel projects, probably OtStrange/Found Down Below  (this is a cyberpunk fantasy romance adventure), but I will also spend time working on all of my current projects, including

  • Funerary Rites, The Hidden Mall, Haunted House, and Running in the Bear Empire, my four weekly-posted stories
  • things for Patreon
  • The Rural Fantasy Aunt Family novel The Family Power

(I don’t focus well 😉

I’ll also probably be taking prompts.

 

* does the whole world use those names and if so, how did North America get the NA-centric names like Pacific, Central, Eastern?

Hidden Mall 48: Nest

Dec17

They scrambled on hands and knees through the doorway, one of the Livs making squeaking noises of distress until they were well through, until the other one took a machete to the last hand grasping for them and all three of them swung the door shut.

This likely saved them some headaches, as when Abby looked up above her head, she realized that they had come in just under a mass of briers and as they settled in, the briers closed behind them.

Abby swallowed nervously  -but there was a path opening in front of them.

And the floor, which might have been uncomfortable to crawl on if it had been an ordinary mall floor, was instead something soft and just a little bit squishy, like cork.

“Onward,” Abby decided.  “Come on, maybe we can find a rabbit.”

There was no “up” to choose, but after a little while, there were a couple left and right turns.  Abby took the left the first time but at the second one, one of the Livs made a noise of complaint.

“Tired,” she pointed out.  Abby had to agree with her. Continue reading →

Lexember Day Three – Mama Bear

Dec13

Mother Bear is our concept for today.

We’re going to start with bear, the actual word for it, which is nonggo. 

You can find this word in only a couple places in modern Bear or even in Old Bear: the Mountains in the far north were originally Nonggofa and now nonggofa means “northern cold” or “inhospitable and cold” or “angry and cold.”

The other place you can find it is in the name of the Mother Bear.

 

Prɘrta Nonggo, Mother Bear.  Neither of these words are used when talking to your actual mother or an actual bear; and actual bear would be called

Kruimja, brown-sharp, from kruimma (brown, obs., used only in formations now) and mimja, sharp. 

This is a way of describing things that are not sacred but near the sacred; that’s how even kruimma became a word not used directly. Now one says nuruw, which was once a word for dead leaves,

nurniew, leafs, and –nuruw, dead.

 

Prɘrta means, in closest translation, mother-est, the most mother, mother above all.  Your own mother would be Prer or prepre. 

This one came out kind of short.

Funerary Rites 33: Leave

Dec12

🔑

There were, at the very least, not literal traps between the Solar in the back left of the downstairs and Senga’s room in the middle right of the upstairs, or at least not new ones.  Senga found that she was holding Erramun’s hand, and she found that he was holding very firmly to that hand.

She closed the door behind them and locked it.  She turned to look at him as he released her hand and dropped to his knees in the middle of her sitting room.  “Mistress.”  His voice sounded rusty; it hitched in the middle of the word.

“Erramun.”  She needed a manual for this.  Aunt Mirabella had clearly not seen fit to provide her with all of the things that she needed for this endeavor.  If it turned out she wasn’t really dead, Senga was going to have come very stern words with her. Continue reading →