Archive | 2020

Saving the Cult (if not the World), Chapter Twenty-Nine

Sep25

Saving the Cult (If not the World) "It's time." Manfield Lee knew he was good at sounding authoritative even when he didn't know what he was talking about - he'd turned a fortune into a megafortune doing just that, after all, not to mention running the Organization - but right now, he DID know what he was talking about. After all, it was just a date, wasn't it? And if the date turned out to be wrong, well, then he knew exactly what to blame it on, and that blame would fall on the scholars and the psychics, not on him. The other thing Manfield Lee knew how to do was to place the blame in very specific ways that were not him.

Mrs. Thompson cleared her throat.  “Now, mind control aside, I’m beginning to wonder a number of things about the leaders of our organization – not offense, young men, considering who your families are -” She nodded at Dylan and Ethan. 

“None taken,” Dylan muttered.  “You’re probably right.”

“Besides,” Ethan put in cheerfully, “Lina here saved our asses.  Lives.  Sorry.  Twice, maybe three times already.  So loyalty…”  He shrugged eloquently. 

“Loyalty is, uh, with the person – people – who value us,” Dylan filled in very softly.  “I think I hear my dad ahead, though, so maybe we talk about loyalty some time when it won’t get me disowned?”  Continue reading →

A Matter of State

Sep25

Malina & Matters of State

This comes after the current story as of today in Malina & the Border Banners, assume it’s a side story.

This was prompted in my Bisexual Visibility Day prompt call.

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“There are things you will need to consider as the Queen of this place.”

The sand-cat paced on the desk, lecturing the girl, who had been named Malina Serafina Anastazja Dominika Naveed Jeleń nic Cecília O Alexandre, but who we will call Malina for the purposes of this story. “There are many things about which you will need to learn,” the cat continued. 

“The borders.”  Malina nodded slowly.  “Yes.  And war.  And the magic, right? I don’t know anything about the magic yet.  And – and the – how these worlds are connected and -“

She felt like she was just beginning her studies again, like everything was strange and nothing made sense and she was running just to try to keep up. 

“No, important things.”  The cat huffed.  “Well, other important things.”

“Other important things?  Cat, if I have to worry about one more thing, I might just walk back into the desert and hug a cactus.”

“Not a cactus.”  The cat jumped up onto her shoulder in one leap.  “Not a cactus, no.  You will be Ruler here.  You will need a Consort.  Or several.  You will need a lineage, and you will need to share the weight of the crown and the scepter and all they mean.”

“Consorts. Consorts.  You want me to think about consorts?”

“I don’t want you to think about them in the specific yet, no.  I want you to consider, for a moment – let us call it as a break between everything else that you are worried about – things that you would be interested in, things that a consort ought to show.  For instance, a smooth, shiny coat of fur, an upright tail, ears that aren’t too bitten by fights, a good run-“

Malina laughed.  “I think the ears are the least – well, all right, I have seen a few people who’ve lost a little bit of ear in a fight, people who stand on two legs like me, that is.  So you want me to write down what I think Royal Consorts ought to be like.”  She paused, halfway to picking up her pen.  “You said more than one.  One ought to be able to help me with an heir, of course – but do they all need to be male?”

“I can’t see why.”  The cat sat down on the desk and stared at her.  “I can’t see any reason why you can’t think about everything that would please you.  You are – or will be – queen, after all.”

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Long Game – a fic for Thimbleful Thursday

Sep24

“That investment is a long shot, you know.”  The broker frowned across the table at Freida.  “It won’t pay out for decades, maybe even longer.  Now if you want something that’ll give you some money to play with-”

“Decades is fine.”  Frieda knew what the broker was seeing – a young woman, maybe in her early twenties, who was going to get bored with this whole thing too quickly and demand greater returns in the short term.

She also knew everything he wasn’t seeing.

“Well, how about we split the difference? You put half into something like this, the other half into, say-”

“If you’re not willing to make the investments I’m interested in, I can find another brokerage firm.  I don’t need money next week.  I want this money to be growing for my posterity.”

She snipped the words off shortly.  She never was good at acting the age her face said she might be.  Then again, she never was good at patience, either – in anything except this.

Except her money.

“Well, if you’re sure.  I just have this contract-”

She smiled.

She could stand having the conversation once every hundred years, could stand the ten or twenty years of tight money for each  century.

She could handle the long game for the payouts that were coming.

 

Written to August 26th’s Thimbleful Thursday prompt and 217 words long.

Malina and the Border Banners, Chapter 19 (A Story for B)

Sep23

Began here.
Landing page here.

“Wait. Wait.”  Malina stared at the cat.  “Wait, some people think that Dominika – the one I’m named after, my ancestor- that she came from another world?”

“Well, many people did.  Right up until the Final Treaty was ratified.”

“Right up until – Wait.  People thought that, or – or people came from another world?” She was trying to remain calm.  She was mostly managing not to shout. “People were coming from another world?” Continue reading →

Bisexual Visibility!

Sep23

Bisexual Visibility Day (over the bi flag)

In honor of Bisexual Visibility Day – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrate_Bisexuality_Day – for the next week, I’m opening up for prompts on any of my extant characters (or any bisexual concept character in any world of mine) – any character who is either canonically bisexual or who is not canonically monosexual or asexual.

(I’ll take prompts on bi-romantic ace characters as well).

🏳️‍🌈

Prompt Away!

For every person who prompts, I’ll write… say, at least 100 words, up to what suits my fancy, to at least one prompt (you can leave as many as 15 prompts) over the next two weeks.

🏳️‍🌈

(and if it weren’t already well-known and obvious, I, too, am bisexual.)

Three and a Half Oaks

Sep22

Based on a prompt found here.

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Between the blink of an eye, in a heartbeat, in a breath, in things that stopped mattering, the world stopped – or at least we did.

People froze. I froze. Animals froze. Insects froze, I think. 

It was – when I thought about it clinically, it was fascinating.  My body didn’t hunger, didn’t ache, didn’t have any needs.  My eyes didn’t dry out.  I’d been sitting in the park.  The others in the park seemed the same – stuck in a single moment.  They didn’t fall over, even if in mid-jog.  The squirrel hung in mid-climb.  The ducks stopped in mid-nibble. 

Nothing moved.  Nothing but plants.  Nothing died, nothing rotted, nothing breathed, nothing but plants.  Continue reading →

The Bellamy, Chapter 21

Sep21

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The Fillion wasn’t as old as the Bellamy, or as big (assuming one could in any way actually gauge the size of a place like the Bellamy, which Veronika was beginning to believe that one – at least when one was her – could not), but it had its share of new-construction oddities, doors which led to tiny triangular closets which happened to have siding on one wall, because at one point that had been the outside, stairways which led nowhere and were used as, again, a closet, this one room in the basement which had once been a parlor on the first floor and now was used for the junior archivists’ break room – finding it two days in a row was one of the tests of actually being an archivist. 

It also had a couple ghosts, of course – any place that collected artifacts would end up with at least one eventually. 

Standing in the passageway with its ancient file cabinets and its dusty ghost, Veronika wasn’t sure if the whole scene made her feel more at home – she’d definitely made a place for herself when she was at the Fillion, after all – or even more outclassed.  Continue reading →

Saving the Cult (if not the World), Chapter Twenty-Eight

Sep18

Saving the Cult (If not the World) "It's time." Manfield Lee knew he was good at sounding authoritative even when he didn't know what he was talking about - he'd turned a fortune into a megafortune doing just that, after all, not to mention running the Organization - but right now, he DID know what he was talking about. After all, it was just a date, wasn't it? And if the date turned out to be wrong, well, then he knew exactly what to blame it on, and that blame would fall on the scholars and the psychics, not on him. The other thing Manfield Lee knew how to do was to place the blame in very specific ways that were not him.

I just want to, you know—

Save the world?

“Um.”  Lina cleared her throat.  “Something like that, yeah, I guess.  I mean, the city?”  She shrugged.  Someone grabbed her shoulder; she pressed them away with a shield and turned to glance.  “Mrs. Thomson?”  She was staring at her English Lit teacher from junior year.  “I didn’t know you were part of the Organization.”

“Catalina, you need to go to the training session.  You’re such a good student; why are you doing this?”  

Not her.  This was straight out of one of her weirder nightmares.  Lina was going to scream.  She was going to start throwing things. 

She didn’t have the time or luxury to do that.  Continue reading →

Perdition

Sep17

This is a soulmark AU Supernatural fanfiction set in an unknown time period in Supernatural except that it happens after the beginning of Season 4. 

Spoilers for that – the beginning of season 4/end of season three – and nothing else, and sort of handwave on Supernatural theological logistics, which is fine, because this is a soulmark AU. 

Definition soulmark AU: (see here for a longer take) – an alternative universe version of an extant setting (often otherwise very similar to the canonical universe) where soulmates exist and some or all people have them; all soulmates have a mark of some sort on their bodies that indicate who their soulmate will be. 

This one was prompted by Anke long enough ago that she may have forgotten – sometime in August, I think.  Might be July. 

The soulmarks in this were inspired by the way the story here – although more by my memory of the way they worked (symbolism and language important to the other) than the actual mechanism in that fic.

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Dean had heard of people who had soulmarks of the first words their soulmate had said to them.  Continue reading →

Malina and the Border Banners, Chapter 18 (A Story for B)

Sep16

Began here.
Landing page here.

In a castle that shouldn’t be, in a place that wasn’t, a girl named after too many things ran her hands over the carvings in the sandstone and tried to read them. 

She could tell they meant something, but what they meant – that was beyond her.  Wait. 

“Wait.”

She ran her fingers over it again.  “It’s – Oh, I can almost read it,” she murmured.  “I can almost feel the weave in it.  The – oh.”  She pulled her fingers away.  “It’s like reading a language that is close to one you know, but is just different enough to be obnoxious.” Continue reading →