Archive | May 2019

Council Meetings

This is a ficlet of Cloverleaf, written to Eseme’s prompt to my current “third rail” prompt call.

🚂

Sometimes, Cya seriously regretted having made Cloverleaf a semi-representative government.

Generally, those were council days, when she was sitting at a table with the chosen and voted-in representatives of all three circles.

Being a dictatorship would be so much easier.

She listened carefully to everyone’s arguments. She asked the question she made sure to ask every time:

“Do we need a law for this, or is it a matter of personal choice?” Continue reading →

A sort of moody, grey-day blog post on memory

May29

My grandma showed up in my dream the night before last.

She does that a lot, actually.

She’s been gone for more than half my life, but she shows up in my dreams.

The worst is forgetting she’s not there anymore. Continue reading →

Prompt Call! And it’s a Dangerous one!

May29

I’ve decided I want to do a prompt call!

Just for fun, to be honest, although I like tips, will write you more words for anything over $1 tipped, and have two current goals for said tips – a Wacom tablet for map-drawing and a day-long writing retreat.

The theme for this call is: The Third Rail

“Never discuss politics or religion in polite company.”

Don’t talk about Money, Politics, Sex, or Religion.

“I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.” – Mark Twain, Attributed

So!

Here’s the trick

only fictional interpretations of these subjects.

No unveiled or thinly-veiled real-life situations. They will be ignored.

That being said – put it on me. Extant settings or a new setting or something else altogether. What sort of politics and religion, (or Money or sex) do you want to talk about?

What sort of things do you wonder about?

What similar taboos do other fictional settings have, mmm?

Bring it on!

~*~

What does an ideal prompt look like?

Well, it sticks to the topic of the call.

It gives me room to wiggle but has a little guidance to it.

It’s at least 4 words long (or possibly a picture).

Choices! You can leave as many prompts as you want! I’ll probably only write to one, but choices are great.

Mapping

May28

A ficlet of Fae Apoc and probably Addergoole East.

🗺️

“What are you doing?”

Chlodovech looked up from his work to see a woman glaring at him. “Surveying.” Wasn’t Amalasuintha supposed to be keeping people away?

“What for?” The woman looked aggressive. She was holding a pitchfork in a way that was clearly not ready to pitch any hay and her eyes were narrowed.

Chlodovech straightened up. “It’s a school project,” he tried. Truth, right? Truth was good? Useful?

“School project.” She narrowed her eyes even more. “You’re mapping my town for a school project.”

“Well, technically, we’re mapping all of former Pennsylvania. It’s going very slowly,” he added ruefully. In part because of things like this. Continue reading →

Protected: The Eastern Gate

May28

Hidden Mall 69: L-Space 📚

May27

Abby shuddered. We are in a horror movie. “We – we really are. Okay. This way, towards the security office, and let’s hope that it’s still there when we get there.” She started walking, pulling her friends closer and wishing idly that she had more hands.

Better not wish that when I’m going through a door, she mused, or I might end up with four arms or something.

They walked straight down the middle of the hall. Nothing in front of them was moving or changing, but they could hear something shifting behind them. When they reached an intersection, Olly toed the line of tile between the two halls. “Look. It’s a slider. The whole mall is like one of those puzzles.”

“Shopping in here must have been a challenge,” Abby mused. “Imagine going in the changing room and coming out in a different store?”

“Heck, trying to find where your mom parked the car.” Liv snorted. “Or — well, anything else. Where’s the food court?” Continue reading →

A Blog Post: Phone Writing

May26

I am starting this blog post on my phone.

I’ve been doing a lot more of that in the last year — a phone is less of a pain in the ass to pull out on a short bus ride (10 minutes, one end of campus to the other) than a tablet-with-keyboard. It’s easier if I have two or three minutes standing in line. It makes writing at stoplights a possibility, and it’s a lot easier to be surreptitious about writing on a phone in a meeting than it is with a tablet or laptop.

It’s also slow compared to writing on a keyboard, even as I get better at it, and it’s interesting, because I compose my thoughts as I type, so composing to a slower typing speed has taken more adjustment than the tiny keyboard. Continue reading →

Haunted House 49: Housecleaning

May25

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

The horses sped up as they got close to the gate. This time, Mélanie could watch – the house, the horses, the creepy-looking gate, the whole thing. She found she was smiling.

Jasper grinned at her in turn. “Not so frightening now, is it?” Continue reading →

Running in the Bear Empire 45: By The Numbers

May24

First: Running in the Bear Empire
Previous:44: Tricks
Next: 46: The Nameless Claw
🐻

“So there were fifty of them,” Deline murmured. They stood ready, weapons drawn, listening to the shouts and screams. “How many do you think we’ve taken out?”

“Over half,” he murmured back.” The shouting stopped; they fell silent.

Somewhere on the other side of the boulder there, a whole bunch of people were trying to kill them. It should have probably frightened Deline. They’d already blooded her here, for one. She found she was smiling. Carrone’s traps were nasty and amazing. The spell-work she’d been pulling out of nowhere was exhilarating. Continue reading →

Putting Out Fires (and Lighting Others)

May23

This one is just sort of silly. Maybe an intro to something?

🚒

Perfect is the enemy of Good.

That’s engraved on the lintel of our headquarters.

Well, it would be, but what’s really there is Firehouse 14.

It’s a good building, and the fire company has since moved somewhere else, bigger place, I think, more poles.

We moved in the way we do most things – quickly, efficiently, with a minimum of excess energy.

Which means, of course (of course) that I’m sleeping in an old firemen’s dormitory and so are the other seven of us.

We put out fires, after all. Sort of. Sometimes we light them.

We’re the Cleaning Team, which is kind of a funny name for us, but it’s what we came up with while drinking vodka one night. We get things done.

We don’t get them done cheaply. We don’t get them done elegantly. We get them done on time and well. (You know: on time, in budget, in scope, pick two.)

And we get them done – if not cleanly, then “cleanly.”

That is. If it is illegal or questionably moral, It will never come back to us. It will never come back to you.

If it is shining and bright and just needs to be done quickly, you will get all the lauds and we will be invisible.

Just don’t ask questions.

That, we actually have a sign for, on the front desk, next to the “Quick And Dirty, Done” sign that our secretary came up with.

(We do actually have a “don’t kill the client” clause in our (unwritten) contracts, but that one has its own escape clause (Our contracts are the one thing we didn’t do quick nor dirty).)