Archives

Wise Mushroom, a story of Fairy Town for the Giraffe Call

May25

I asked for prompts regarding mushrooms here for The MicroPrompt Giraffe Call. This is written to Anke’s Prompt here and is set in my Fairy Town ‘verse

“They call him the Wise Mushroom.” Delores held tight to Everett’s hand and dragged him into the center of the park.

“Who’s they and who’s he?” Everett wasn’t so much resisting the pull – even at 10 years old, he knew better than that – as he was arguing his way every inch of the path.

“They is everybody. And he is the Wise Mushroom. He’s… you know. He’s the Wise. Mushroom. And he’s the grandfather of the mushrooms, and you can eat them and you get smarter.”

“That doesn’t sound good. That doesn’t sound right. And besides, if he’s the grandfather, wouldn’t he mind you eating his grandchildren?”

“Well, maybe it’s like…” Delores pursed her lips. “Like grandma’s billy goat, at the farm. He likes making new baby goats all the time. Right?”

“You’re saying, what, the Wise Mushroom is like, is like the billy goat? This makes less and less sense. Who’s been telling you stories, Delores? They’ve been yanking your chain.”

“I’m afraid it’s been me.” The voice came from the brush in front of them. “I’ve been telling Delores stories.”

Everett pushed the brush aside. “Who are you? Where?”

“Right here.” Down at the children’s feet, a mushroom a foot tall was smoking a long pipe. “I’ve been telling Delores stories.”

Tip ‘Shroom 😉

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/721022.html. You can comment here or there.

Give and Take, a story of Fairy Town for the December OrigFic Bingo card

Mar12

For [personal profile] kelkyag‘s prompt to my December Bingo Card – it fills the “Disability: Chronic” square.

Fairy town has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

I do believe the beggar Kelkyag was referring to was this guy. It fits, at least.

Aston had learned years ago that there were some things magic couldn’t cure.

He’d learned even earlier that modern medicine couldn’t fix everything; he’d learned that when his mother got sick, when Mrs. Newmann next door got sick, when Randy from school got sick and never came back.

He’d been eight, then, and the doctors had told him things that he hadn’t really understood, and his father had told him things that hadn’t helped much, and Mr. Newmann had cried for hours and wouldn’t talk to him.

But eight was old enough to know that Granny Paolo was not actually his granny, no matter that she babysat him and gave him sweets he wasn’t supposed to have. And eight was old enough to learn that magic had a cost.

So Aston had told Granny “I’ll pay it. Whatever. Just bring mommy and Mrs. Newmann back.”

And she had asked him, “you, who are a child-boy, you, when their husbands could not?”

Which was when Aston learned that love had limits. The first time Aston learned love had limits.

“Me,” he’d agreed.

“You are young, son, and have your life in front of you. Would you risk that, for the sake of those that are old?”

“My mother’s not old!”

“Older than you, child.”

“Not old at all!”

“Come back tomorrow. I will give you this – they will get no worse between now and then. Think about it. Ask your father, if you would. Ask your friends.”

Aston had already learned that his father would not pay the price, whatever it was.

But he did ask his friends: the goblin in the park, the faerie in the fountain, the lion in the bar.

“It will be hard. But it will be worth it.” Three voices, three phrasings, but Aston understood the meaning.

And he had paid the price.

Years later, frustrated and angry and losing the last of his sight, hungry and depressed and with all his human friends having left him, he’d confronted Granny Paolo.

“You saved my mother. You saved Mrs. Newmann. There has to be a way to save my sight.”

She had shaken her head – it was only a blur, then, but he could see the movement. “No, so. The price of magic is its price, and cannot be wished away.”

And he had cried like a babe, the way he hadn’t when his mother was sick, and Granny Paolo had comforted him, patted his back, and fed him cookies like he was eight again.

“You have borne up under this burden well, so I will tell you this: when you give of yourself like you did, selflessly and wholly, the magic always gives something back.”

It had taken Aston four more years to find it, the voice like an angel that poured from him mouth, and by then, his sight was gone altogether. Magic gave, and magic took. For everything there was a price.

He sat in his spot by the curb and sang, his hat out. Sometimes the good people left money, and sometimes the bad people took it. Aston didn’t mind. Life, like magic, gave and took. He sang them all a song and let the fates sort it out.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/690438.html. You can comment here or there.

Born of a Fish, a drabble of Fairy Town for the Random-Bingo

Feb28

To [personal profile] kelkyag‘s prompt to my other bingo call.

This fills the square “Born of a Fish”[Aarne–Thompson classification system #705] square and is from my Fairy Town ‘verse.

There is a fountain in the park that never goes dry and never freezes.

In this town, that’s more than a bit notable. The fountain is never touched with graffiti, never littered in or near; the grass is always trimmed and the stonework perfect.

It looks as if it goes down forever. It looks as if it is a portal into some distant sea. And the fish there are big, and fat, and beautiful.

Babies come from there, sometimes, when the need is strong, popping out of the water as if born from the fish.

And sometimes babies vanish there.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/683698.html. You can comment here or there.

Worldbuilding Day 18: Fairy Town

Feb20

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.
Every day in February (or most days), I will answer one question about any one of my settings.
The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!
The eighteenth question comes from Kelkyag and is for Fairy Town

What made Fairy Town different?

Nobody knows!

Okay, that’s cheating, and also a lie.

Long before Fairy Town was Fairy Town (and, really, it is only Fairy Town to those in the know), it was a holy place; deep in the crossroads park that was, once, the center of a small town, there is a shrine.

There is, if you ask the right people, some disagreement as to who the shrine is to; there has always been disagreement over it, and if you dig into the dirt anywhere in that park, you will find bones, many of them humanoid.

What nobody argues about is that the shrine is a place of power.

It is not the only one in this variant of the world; indeed, when mankind first came here, there were many, like springs.

But, for as powerful as they are, there are many ways a place of power can be desecrated, blocked off, broken. And many of them were.

Others had cities grow up around them, as Fairy Town did. And in the cities growing up, some places locked the power into place with ancient and sometimes horrible magics, and some people bound the fae from entering with blood rituals and complex prayers, or, at least, things they thought were prayers.

(In a couple places, this was tried and did not succeed. In those cities, only those completely fae-blind and the nastiest of fae live, and those are not nice places at all).

In Fairy Town, the rituals did not take hold, and the place of power acted, as they all did, as a magnet for those who were fae, for those who had Faith, for those who were Strange and Wyrd. And without the rituals and call-them-prayers to hold the fae out… they just kept coming, and they settled.

And there they have been ever since.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/672076.html. You can comment here or there.

The Church in the Park, a story of Fairy Town for the Giraffe Call

Feb12

This is to kelkyag‘s and flofx‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

It takes part in my Fairy Town setting, after Fairies in the Church.

Names from Seventh Sanctum.

There were fairies in the church again.

Bishop Macnamilla was no longer a young man; indeed, he had not been able to make a pretense at youth for longer than most of the priests of the city had been alive.

And he had been watching the rot spread through his City and his Church for decades. He had seen the spread and done what he could – but not what he should – to stop it, back when he could make a pretense at youth.

The elders of the Church had not listened back then, and the young in the Church would not listen now. It had been up to him, no position and only the strength of his conviction, as a young man. And he had failed.

He tottered – he hated to admit it, but pride went before a fall and he was indeed tottering – back from Father Nehemiah’s abomination of a church. He could not do what needed to be done there, but there were other places. In this city, there were always the proper sorts of places. Before this place had been called ‘fairy town’ by the common people, before it had fallen to rot, it had been called the GodTown.

The Bishop went walking – limping – in the heart of the city, in the heart of a park where angels and demons feared to tread, where the dirty and the dusty had taken over. He tottered to the crossroads in the center of that park, and, from there, walked without fail, his back suddenly straight again and his steps sure, seventeen paces due north.

It did not take long for the fae to find him. In this park, they were lousy on the ground.

It took almost less time for the fae to realize where they were, and only a moment for them to realize who he was. But by then, the Fate was sealed.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/665806.html. You can comment here or there.

Six Sins and One, a story of Fairy Town for the Giraffe Call

Jan22

For [personal profile] kelkyag‘s Prompt.

This comes after Moving In

I looked up 7 deadly sins on Wikipedia, and this popped out at me. Said I, “that looks like a fanfic.”

So:

Six things you can get away with in Fairy Town, and the One that you Can’t.

Pride

The Lion King stared around the neighborhood his women had bought.

His Women. His Neighborhood. And it was good.

He waved at the barkeep, who waved back. Everyone knew this was his place, and this his place was the best place.

The Lion King smiled, and the world smiled back.

Deceit

He told stories of his upbringing, of their last city, of their real names.

They all did. It was part of their shtick, part of what made them strange and untouchable. They were from the Sahara. They were from Jersey. The zoo. The moon.

And the barkeep just laughed.

Innocent Blood

The Lion King hadn’t meant to kill the kid.

The teenager had challenged him, though, and there was only so much reason left by the time someone was done rubbing against his women and mocking him. And then there was a dead punk, and a deep hole, and nobody spoke.

Wicked Plots

They’d bought three houses before anyone really noticed, five before anyone started to complain, and seven before the barkeep’s wife frowned at them.

“What are you up to?” She made it sound like a gentle scold.

The Lion King just smiled. “We’re plotting world domination. Don’t tell anyone?”

Nobody told.

Mischievous Feet

He liked telling stories like that. It went along with many of his other tricks. Stealing someone’s food and giving it to someone else. Stealing someone’s baby (he only did that once), stealing someone’s luck.

Mostly because he was a Lion, the town tolerated his pranks – and his lies.

Deceitful Witness

Not just little lies, not just the ones about where they were from. He lied on the stand when called to trial. He lied about who stole things (including the baby.) They all did, because he did. It was fun, to loll about making up stories. Nobody seemed to mind.

Sowing Discord

…until the lies and the theft started pitting a couple neighborhood regulars against each other.

The Lion King thought it was funny. Just another prank, right? Get the ogre and the goblins yelling. Get the norms yelling.

Tom Morgan and his wife headed the pack, but the whole town was behind them.

“Stop. Or Get Out.” It might take a troll to take down a lion, but four hundred townspeople were bigger than one troll.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/458015.html. You can comment here or there.

Moving in, A story of Fairy Town for the giraffe Call

Jan21

For [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt.

They came to town in the late autumn, riding in on Harleys, a rumble so loud that it could be heard through the whole city.

They took up residence in Tom Morgan’s, a bar on the west side of town that catered to the rough, the poor, the wild. They simply strode in, looked around, and took over the best corner of the place.

Nobody stopped them. Nothing short of a full-grown troll had a chance, and the city, while it had plenty of the fae blood, did not lend itself to trolls and other Large Creatures.

Tom Morgan himself took one look at them and sent his wife out to deal with them. In his defense, this was not so much out of cowardice as out of prudence: the pride had far more women than it had men, and the men that were not the clear leaders were jittery and nervous around other men.

The last thing Tom wanted was a jittery juvenile lion-soul ripping up his bar, so he sent out his wife to deal with the pride.

Not being a full-grown troll, or a troll of any sort, Rudy Morgan didn’t move the pride. She served them heavy beer and light snacks, and flirted harmlessly with only the oldest of their men and the most pregnant of their woman. And she joked. Rudy Morgan, it had been said, could joke through a hurricane. Joking through a pride of lions was all in a day’s work, for her.

And it would have been fine. It would have been strange, uncomfortable and weird, but they would have adjusted until, like bikers everywhere, the lions moved on. They would have cleaned up the glass, gritted their teeth and smiled, until the lions moved on.

Until they started buying property.

Next: Moving In

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/457580.html. You can comment here or there.

The Stories Tell… a story of the Fairy Town for the Giraffe Call

Dec29

To flofx‘s prompt

Once upon a time, they told people to be good to their children, or the faeries would take those children away. And they believed it.

Looking back on it, looking at the paperwork, the faded clippings, I must have been almost two when it happened. I remember being cold, and alone, and crying. Then I remember Mother and Father, and not being cold or alone anymore.

Snowfall showed up a year later. I wasn’t there when we took her, but I remember Mother bringing her home. When we took Rainy Night, two years after Snowfall, I was old enough to help.

I got Tornado on my own. I remember Father looking at me and asking me why, why him.

I remember, too, telling Father that I had always wanted a big family. And that Tornado had been wandering around on his own, wearing nothing but a diaper. Father laughed, and we had another sibling.

Mother is dark and Father is fair, so the range in our complexions is often thought to be the vagaries of genetics. There are a lot of neighborhoods in the city, and we have lived in many of them, so there is little question as to whence come the children with no pregnancy; they are with us when we move. Although we never move too close to where we have found our family. Mother is stern and Father is kind, and they raise us, love us, the way the places we came from never did. They love us as their own, and we love each other as kin.

My parents say that some day, when I’m older, we will find me a wife, dark like I’m fair and stern as I am kind, and we will carry on Mother and Father’s work. But today, I am looking for a little brother.

The night is silent, and clear, and cold. I will name him Clearness, or perhaps Silent Night. His father has been sitting in that bar for hours.

Once upon a time, people were warned to take care of their children, or the faeries would take them, and they believed it.

They will believe it again.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/438065.html. You can comment here or there.

Newcomers, a story of Fairy Town for the Giraffe Call

Oct24

to flofx‘s prompt.

Fairy Town has a landing page here

“I don’t know.”

“It’s a little strange.”

“It’s more than a little strange is what it is.”

“No, it’s just fucking weird.”

Three boys turned and looked at the fourth. His hair was shaped into a foot-high mohawk, his nose, lip, and both ears pierced, and, although it didn’t show right now, he had a tattoo covering his entire back. He looked back at them, just as levelly. “What? It is.”

“Olin, you’re a, a, uh…” Judson trailed off. Olin was a lot bigger than him, among other things.

“So? I can’t say something’s weird? Just because I’m a, a, uh,” he imitated the younger boy. “It’s not like you’re not an uh, too.”

“We’re all uhs, okay?” Joe interrupted, before it could get out of hand. Olin was big, but Judson was sharp. “And Olin’s right. Even if we’re Strange and Wyrd, that… is just fucking strange.”

The new house on the block had a white picket fence. Most of the houses had white picket fences; nobody around here wanted to be the guy with an iron fence, or even an aluminum one that looked iron. It had a concrete sidewalk and an asphalt driveway, like most of the houses. It had a white metal roof and two adorable dormers like eyes, looking like the same floorplan of every house on the road. It looked, to whit, ex-actly, down to the tilted brick chimney, like the house that had burned down there, two years prior.

And the new family, moving in? Looked like clones of the dead or gone Fouriers, lost in the same fire.

“…Fucking weird,” Judson agreed.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/412661.html. You can comment here or there.

Shoot the Moon, Pow, Bow

Jul12

For flofx‘s Commissioned Continuation of Eggshells and Lineman’s Hopes.

Long before Guarding the Church and referencing Strange Neighbors.

He came around the Stanton Arms and the park like he owned the area, walking in with a swagger like he was the strongest guy in the place.

Tia Lian hated him immediately. This was her street, her neighborhood. She didn’t need some big sleek guy with slicked back hair and a shiny smile coming in. She didn’t need no fairy who screamed fey from every line of his body to take over when she was just sort-of-fey-around-the-edges. She didn’t need him.

So she ignored him, while the others flooded around him. “Who are you? What are you doing here? Where are you from?”

And he just smiled.

“What kind of fairy are you? Are your family from around here, did you come from the Other Place? You’re fey, right? You’ve got to be fey, tell us you’re fey.”

And he just smiled.

“Do you play? You like games, right? We’re playing Cowboys and Indians and the Wild Fey, come on, you can be an Indian.”

And he just smiled, and made a hand gesture like he was pulling guns out of his pockets, pointed at the two in front, and said, “Bow, bow. Dead.”

“That’s not how you play!” Tia Lian jumped up as the two staggered, playing dead very convincingly. “The Indians don’t get guns. The Indians get bows and arrows and the wild fae get spears and the cowboys, they get guns!”

He just smiled, and holstered his invisible guns.

Tia was enraged. “That’s not how you play!”

He wouldn’t answer, which just made her angrier. Nothing but “bow, bow.”

“Let him play a cowboy, then,” one of her friends urged. “He can have my hat. I bet he’d make an awesome cowboy, with those guns.”

“Those are just his fingers!”

“Your spear’s just your hand, what’s your point? Come on, he’s new, let him be the cowboy.”

“That’s not how it works! I’ve been here longest, I get to be the cowboy!”

“You get to be the fairy, you’re the best fairy we have.”

That almost placated her. “I do pretty good at the fairying thing,” she admitted.

At that, the new stranger nodded. He pulled out his invisible gun and shot up into the air. “Bow, bow. The moon.”

“He thinks you hang the moon! See, come on, let him be the cowboy this time!”

Tia had already determined that they would never let her be the cowboy, but that didn’t mean she had to take it in good grace. Besides, she knew that “shoot the moon” wasn’t the same as “hang the moon,” but she wasn’t sure it was a compliment either way.

“Fine.” She couldn’t sulk without looking like the bad guy, which just made her want to sulk even more. “He can be the cowboy. But you know what they say, cowboy. Watch out for trech’rous fairies.”

“I thought the Indians were supposed to be trech’rous!” Her minions were beginning to grate on her. She gave them all her best evil-girl smile.

“That’s what we want you to think.” She made a stabbing gesture, aiming for the new guy’s armpit. He caught her imaginary spear in his heart, and staggered backwards, falling to the ground.

“Bao, bao,” he whispered. Under the shadow of a borrowed hat, he winked at her. “Right in the heart.”

Tia Lian felt an echoing stab in her own heart. “Tia Bao,” she corrected him.

Everything after that was just formalities.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/369935.html. You can comment here or there.