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Guard the Garden

Nov15

Originally posted on Patreon in Nov 2019 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

Guard the Garden

This is part of the Damkina series of stories, which you can find in her tag. 

It begins with The Gardener and is a story about a very very (very, very) old fae who, while working as a landscaper for a museum, finds herself suddenly fighting against the apocalypse.

What you need to know: she has expanded her garden to cover a sizable quadrant of the city and she has ‘not-really-followers’ as she is, well, not REALLY a goddess. Except she is.

This is in the middle of the Faerie Apocalypse: would-be gods and godlings are invading the Earth from Elleheim, where they were banished thousands of years ago. Among those who have come back, many have claimed to be ancient gods. 

See Pallas Athene here. See Hera here. See Zeus here.

🌳

“Hey! Hey, get out of our garden! Back off, you — you thing!   I have a broom and I’m not afraid to use it!”

Damkina had drifted off — not a proper sleep but a little bit of a nap in the sunlight, something she found herself doing more and more as she spent most of her waking hours rebuiilding a world for, by her count, the third time.

She hadn’t remembered it being this hard before, but, then again, the last time there hadn’t been quite so many annoying would-be gods all over the place, like aphids, getting into everything and ruining it.
Continue reading →

For Want of a Spoon

Nov14

Originally posted on Patreon in Nov 2019 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

For Want of a Spoon

Thank you to Cal for naming & helping me name the magical schools. 

✨

If there were two things America had plenty of, people would say, it was space, space and magic.

(and money, most people would add, and then, muttering, “and luck.”)

“What are you doing this weekend?  I know we’ve got to study for runes and magical substances, and I have an essay on the Theory of Magic due, but—”

“Skycross game against Merriweather Academy.”

“Yeah, that.  Well, I guess I can study in the intermissions. How’re you doing on that splatter-shield spell?”

“That’s senior-year work and you know it is!….  all right, fine.  It’s functional about 75% of the time and it doesn’t drain my energy anymore, pulls it from temperature changes.” Continue reading →

It’s Only Forever, Not that Long at All

Nov13

Originally posted on Patreon in Nov 2019 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

It's Only Forever - Not that Long At All - The Great NanoWrimo prompt Call

This one was a blast that sort of ran away from me and yes, it’s sort of the beginning of a story, sorry, Kelkyag. 💙

Also a  new universe, as far as I know.

☔

It was supposed to be unwise. It was supposed to be dangerous, deadly.

But Lara always stopped for strangers on the side of the road — hitchhikers, people with broken-down cars, accidents, once someone who turned out to be suffering from dementia and more than a little lost.

Her mother had always done the same. Her mother had always done the same. Her father had done so in WWI and come back home with two boyfriends and a girlfriend. That had taken some careful paperwork and some fast talking, back then.

Lara had yet to come up with anything remotely that interesting, but she’d made some good friends, stopped a serial killer, and, once, gotten a reward.
Continue reading →

To the Quiet Places

Nov12

Originally posted on Patreon in Nov 2019 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

Written to a prompt from https://weirder.earth/@orrery on Mastodon (this was supposed to be the “short-free” for this month. It’s a bit… long. 😀 )

⛰️

The point, as far as Sheetal had been aware, was to get away from everything and everyone.

The point had been to be out in the mountains where she couldn’t be reached, where she could reasonably say “sorry, no signal” and where nobody would bother her even if anyone could find her.

She’d hiked up a mountain to get to this cabin.  She’d reserved it a year in advance.  She’d brought enough food for three weeks and enough whisky for four and – it had been one hell of a hike – she’d brought a small solar panel for her typewriter. Continue reading →

I’m Begging of You… Jolene

Nov8
Originally posted on Patreon in Nov 2019 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

On Fridays they were friends. Jolene had figured that much out.

Friday morning they had physics lab together. She and Dolly would sit at the same table, work on their projects together, make jokes together — about the class, about the school, even about Hank. Fridays were pretty good. Jolene held her breath to get through the beginning of the week, but she lived for Fridays.

Tuesdays and Thursdays they had Calc II, Physics Lecture, and Early British Literature together — just the lit with Hank — and Dolly was cool but not mean or nasty. She’d greet Jolene but sit somewhere else, ignore any jokes Jo tried to make, avoid conversation about anything other than class or, maybe, the school itself — and if Jo sat next to Hank, Dolly’s demeanor would get even chillier. (Jo’d tried three times, decided that was enough for a sample, and gone to sitting in the back.)
Continue reading →

Tinkering

Nov6
Originally posted on Patreon in Nov 2019 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.
Tinkering
New universe, as far as I know.

🌱

The terrarium seemed to have developed a strange mess in the lefthand back corner.  Isidora moved it this way and that – carefully, always carefully; even though it was on a rotating platform, she always made certain to move it very slowly – until she could get a magnifying glass aimed at the corner in question.

Yes.  She frowned at it for a moment.  It seemed to have gotten a ruined building.   Ruined, mostly abandoned, the roof collapsing.

When was the last time she’d looked at that corner?  Maybe last week.  The terrarium was mostly self-sustaining – it needed a little water and a little food every so often and she kept it plugged in to a battery back up to make sure it stayed at about the right temperature and such things, and it had been a busy week.

Still.  She took a series of photos and made a couple notes.  She’d have to keep an eye on that. Continue reading →

Things a Tree Knows

Nov5
Originally posted on Patreon in Nov 2019 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.
The character(s) in this story are the grandsprouts of Curry, from Addergoole Year 9, especially this chapter and this outtake and this hiatus fic.
(note: as of posting in mid-January, Year 9 is temporarily down.  Sorry about that!)

Short version: Curry, and “his” children, reproduce more or less asexually, and thus produce clones.  But possibly not really.

This story is set a (short) generation after the apocalypse (2011-2012) in the Fae Apoc setting.

Quercus  and their siblings are all “they”, because gender can be interesting when you’re a magical fairy not-quite-clone tree person.

🌲

There were things Quercus knew that didn’t really matter.   Their siblings were not quite clones, but everyone thought they were; they weren’t quite clones of their parent, but everyone thought they were.

(They knew something that did matter, which was that their family line’s exact method of reproduction continued to confuse both botanists and fae geneticists, but it still seemed to work, although Quercus hadn’t been interested in trying themselves yet.)

They knew they grew up slowly, they had longer before they had to go to “school” than most people by almost twice as long, and they got to play in their garden as much as they wanted as long as they did their schoolwork and chores first. Continue reading →