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Three Inches, unknown

Jul10

This is from @Inventrix’s prompt for “a Pookah;” @DaHob picked species and name. Um, I might have just put pookah in Planner ‘Verse.

The world looked different down at 3″ from the pavers. More importantly, to Cynthia’s point of view, SHE looked different to the world at three inches from the pavers.

If she wasn’t careful, what she would look like was dinner, but she could work around that. Work under it, really; her small form was very good at burrowing, and there was a lot of space where the dirt was bare, space that, from her dim memories, would have been covered over, the last time she was through this city.

She’d eaten her way through a book, once, that had in it voles that really had to be called supervoles. Giant creatures that could dig through anything. While she wasn’t quite that impressive in her small form – she was under a foot long, after all – she could make mincemeat of loam or even hardpack clay.

And once she was there, under the lines of the wild gangs, under the places where the dirt tasted unhealthy and smelled like poison, she could pull back up, dirty and tired after an entire day but safe, into the small gardens at the heart of the city. She could pop her head up, and then the rest of her, traverse the rose garden while still tiny and furry, and then, with a shake to dislodge the dirt, she could stand.

The other girls in the chief’s harem wondered why she was his favorite. She was, they said, mousy (she didn’t correct them), small and a bit stout and brown. Her nose was pointed. But she, unlike them, got information to the chief that nobody else could and, while she lived, he would pamper and protect her, for that.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/75262.html. You can comment here or there.

Phoenix Trees

Jul7

From dailyprompt: “like a phoenix from the ashes;”

Planners’verse, before the Event.

“…and, when the world has fallen, we will rise!” Adrian pounded his fist on the table. He’d always fancied himself an orator, and even in his nineties, his voice was still strong. “We will rise, like a phoenix from the ashes.”

“No,” Jasmine snapped. “Not like a phoenix.” The table of geriatric leaders fell silent at her rudeness; into the gap they left, she plowed on. “Phoenixes rise the same as they died. They don’t change, they don’t evolve. And they’re mythical. No. Let’s plan to rise changed but whole, a seed of a new world, the core and the nutrients needed to grow into something completely different.”

Across the table, Oliver coughed. “It seems like you’re putting a lot of weight on a metaphor, Jasmine. It’s just a way of speaking.”

“The way we speak of something informs our thoughts on it, as you should damn well know, Oliver Hannaford.”

Next to Oliver, Geoffrey cackled. “She’s got you there, Hannaford.”

“Damnit, Red, don’t encourage her, she’ll just keep going.” The days when Geoffrey had any hair, much less the red hair of his childhood, were long gone, but they’d all known each other at least that long. Nicknames stuck, just like old mindsets and old habits. Jasmine coughed, hoping she could use this old habit to her advantage for once.

“I might,” she admitted, her tone softening. Suzanna and Eugenia gave her sharp looks, but she knew what she was doing. She wasn’t senile yet. “I know I can go on and on, gentlemen, when I get excited. And it’s not all that good for me to get excited anymore.” But she could see in their eyes that at least a couple of them remembered when she’d been a lot more exciting. “I’m just worried, you know. About the grandchildren.”

Bless her heart, Suzanna picked up the cue. “It won’t be in our time, you know,” she agreed, shifting her body posture so you could almost see a crocheted shawl draped around her bony shoulders. She made it sound believable, even though the optimistic projections put the catastrophic even in their children’s time and the pessimistic ones had it well within what was left of the Elder’s collective dotage. “It will be our grandchildren that have to pick up the pieces. And, really, if the world has gotten bad enough that it falls apart, why would we want to bring it back just the same?” She plowed on over the objection Oliver was thinking of making. “We have a chance to rebuild.”

“To redecorate,” Eugenia picked up.

“To remake the world as we want it,” Jasmine finished. She could see the light shining in the men’s eyes. Adrian nodded slowly, coughed, and looked back down at his notes.

“…and, when the world has fallen,” he restarted, ramping back up like a champion, “we will rise, the seeds we have planted growing into a new world, a better world. We will rise like a mighty oak.”

Jasmine folded her hands over her stomach and smiled.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/71486.html. You can comment here or there.

The Anthropologist’s Journal

Jun30

From [community profile] dailyprompt

Planners’-verse, further in the future.

Beginning of Spring, probably year 317 Post-Conflict

I have been living among the Kaveh for a little over five seasons now. Such was not my original plan, of course; we do not embed anthropologists in the wild tribes any more. Early attempts had a 0% survival rate, and even we – the Tower, that is – are not that mad.

I was not, at the time, even studying the Kaveh, or any of the wild tribes. I was visiting a village along the canal, discussing education plans and a method of marrying-out to nearby settlements that would prevent the excessive inbreeding such places are prone to. Considering what the tribes did to that place, I doubt that is a problem anymore.

Not the Kaveh, however; that was the Kybelii. They raided in numbers and with ferocity that exceeded any report or tale I have ever heard, tearing through the village. They killed the men, and took the women and children prisoner, including, of course, me.

I will not write of my days with the Kybelii. They were a violent and smelly people, and I don’t mourn their demise, except in the loss of their genetic diversity.

Their demise, and my unwilling and accidental embedding among the Kavah, came two and one-half moons after the slaughter of Johnsport, when the Kavah and two other of the wild tribes attacked and killed all of the Kybelii warriors and about half of their domestic population. They split the remainders and the slaves – myself, again – among the three tribes. I, of course, went to the Kavah.

At first, I believed that this would simply be the same unpleasant, odorous captivity with a new set of captors. Our information on the wild tribes didn’t indicate any major variation in behavior: they pillaged, stole, and raped, and as far as we could tell, they did so indiscriminately. Their slaves were treated as chattel, as cattle, bought and sold, bred until they died, often in childbirth.

And perhaps that would have continued to be my fate. The tribe sold many of the slaves they acquired from the Kybelii, and two more died on the long trip from summer pastures to winter camp. I could have been among either group, easily enough.

But a young female warrior-in-training who I believed to be the chief’s daughter, and her brother, slightly older, took a liking to me, and I was moved into the yurt they shared with their mother for the duration of the winter.

By the time that the long, miserable, snow was over and it was time to move back to summer pastures, I was swollen with an unwanted pregnancy from the Kybelli, and had learned to speak the dialect the Kavah used and taught my owners quite a bit of the Scholar’s English I had grown up speaking. I had also befriended my owners’ mother, as well as the two teenagers themselves, and, through them, the chieftain, as well as the man, their lore-speaker, who I had originally thought was the chief.

(Their lore-speaker is the father to my young mistress, the chieftain the husband-to-be of both mistress and master. More on that later).

And it seems that their lore-speaker is intrigued by the way that The City People (that would be yours truly, neveryoumind that I am, in fact a Tower Person) handle their disputes. His children were very miffed to find him taking more and more of my time, but he is, after all, an important person. And he is open to new ideas, even if, between you and I, journal, they are in actuality very old ideas.

We have been working on the idea of justice, recently, he and I. The Kavah, as with, I gather, many of the other wild tribes, have a concept of “revenge” and one of “survival,” but justice has until now been missing from their vocabulary.

During the summer, there is little time for talking, so I talk quite a bit during the long idle periods of winter, and now, as the snow begins to melt, I find myself talking quickly. They will raid again, soon. Perhaps I can bend them, slowly, towards fairness and justice. Perhaps this year there will be less slaughter.

I hope that I can. Their summer pasture, this year, is awfully close to the Tower.

Prompt: “bending towards justice”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/67085.html. You can comment here or there.

30days: Beginnings

Jun27

Day 21 of 30 days of Fiction: 21) Write a scene with a drink(ing) of some sort.”

In The Planners setting, long before Hello but not that long after Ants, Grasshoppers, Magpies.

“Sit down.” Jasmine poured two finger-widths of the thick bluish drink into each of the tiny crystal cups; on the other side of her desk, her three most promising young relatives (a niece, a nephew, and a second cousin, twice removed, none of them old enough to drink, if the rule of law was still holding) sat like their strings had been cut.

“You know what the family has been doing.” It wasn’t a question. If they hadn’t known, they wouldn’t have been called here. Still, three heads nodded silently; the niece, Theresa, frowning while she assented. Interesting.

“You know that we have locations around the continent where we have been stockpiling supplies.” They barely bothered to nod to that one; it was common knowledge. “And that there are elders of the family, senior Planners, at each site.” Of course. This time, it was the nephew, Jonah, who frowned. The family elders, Jasmine included, were often considered hide-bound and too traditional, too slow to respond, by the younger generation. So had it been through human history. “This is why I need the three of you.”

All three faces lit up; she paused to hold their attention and sipped from her cup. Politely, they all did the same; only the cousin, Bauer, didn’t flinch at the thick fruity alcohol.

She took a second sip; so did they, more carefully this time. Impatient: Jonah’s foot was tapping. She set her class down.

“I need you to keep an eye on the elders.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/64840.html. You can comment here or there.

30 Days Meme: Forbidden

Jun11

Day 7 of 30 days of Fiction: “7) Write something dirty (take that how you will)”

This comes after Hello, and before The Cathedral, and I believe the Foundation/Library/Academy setting is The Planners.

Tess had found herself fascinated with Thomas from the moment he walked into her Academy. He was young, far younger than she was, the age she’d been when the world had fallen apart. But there was something in his eyes… if she had believed in reincarnation, she would have thought he had come back with the full knowledge of some ancient sage. He had that feel to him, that tired worldliness. She wondered if he’d ever been young.

She tried not to stalk him. She paid him no more attention than she did any other student, for his first months, his first year at her school. She said nothing untoward to him, nothing that could cause any eyebrows to raise. She shot him no steamy glances, spent no time reading his file other than as her position as Dean demanded.

But he seemed intent on coming to her attention. He questioned policy, loudly, in the atrium, three crimes all in one. He questioned the facts in the old texts, another crime, and, once, was found making margin notes in a book that had been a century old when the Library was built. He argued science with his teachers, and wanted to test the theories in the books. He questioned everything.

And the more he questioned, the more she wanted him. Illicit as it was, forbidden in so many ways, Tess could no stop her desire. She was past child-bearing, his ultimate authority figure here at the school, 4 times his age. He was her student.

And she wanted him.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/54845.html. You can comment here or there.

30DaysMeme – Hello.

Jun4

Okay, this setting officially needs a landing page and an icon now. via [personal profile] kc_obrien, via [personal profile] ravenswept, the first of the 30 days of fiction meme. It’s in the same setting as the Library/Academy/Foundation. Which also needs a NAME

1) Write a scene saying “hello”

He came to the school in autumn, once the crops were in. They’d gone back to old habits and old practices in the Academy as in so much else of the world, knowing that the old existed and had survived for so long for a reason.

He was young enough, fifteen, the youngest they accepted students full-time, that this was the only world he remembered. That he had likely never seen a building still standing as large as the Academy, or as many books in one place as the Library. But he didn’t stare like a hick, the way some of them did. He didn’t gape, or gawk. He looked around, calmly, taking it all in. She got the feeling he was looking for escape routes, although he didn’t have the fight-or-flee set to his shoulders, either.

She hadn’t planned on coming down until the rest of the students arrived, probably within the week. She had under-Deans to handle admissions. But something about the way he looked around made her descend the stairs from what she thought of, somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind, as her ivory tower.

“Hello,” she said, trying not to smirk when he finally deigned to notice her. “I’m Dean Theresa.”

His slow smile in return was everything she had been expecting. “Hello. I’m Thomas.”

The 30 in KC’s Journal, and the original post

Forbidden
A Kiss Under Duck & Cover
Beginning With a Kiss

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Ants, Grasshoppers, Magpies.

May30

From dailyprompt: “The future is now,” misc. post-apoc, well, apoc, the same setting and Foundation as The Cathedral (LJ Link) but some time earlier and from a different POV.

The future is now. We spent our whole lives, as our parents and grandparents and so on did, planning for the future, building the world around us as best we could, “giving back to the community,” the way people would have said a year or two ago, building up our own fortunes only to carry others along with us, in the best tradition of charity and, at the same time, in the best paths of cleaning up your own backyard first. That is: we made sure we were well off, that our neighbors were comfortable, that those in our town weren’t going hungry, and that those in our county did not starve.

And amid all that nest-feathering, we put away for a rainy day, planned for a dry season, put a little of our wealth aside in jars in the back yard and boxes under the mattress; we squirreled away supplies and never threw anything at all out that we or our descendants might use.

We were the world’s biggest pack rats, saving everything we could get our paws on in case of a long, cold winter.

And now? Now we’ve reached that winter. We’ve come to that point we were reaching for, our family, our Foundation, our mandate. And here I am, ankle deep in paperwork while outside our gates, our neighbors risk starving. And the biggest argument I’m having with the rest of the family?

Not how much should we share?. That would make sense. But can we dig into the supplies now, so that we have something to share with those who have not saved?

Ants, grasshoppers, snakes and scorpions. We talk about animals, but no-one is brave enough to say magpie while we cling to our shiny things, merely because they’re shiny.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/47326.html. You can comment here or there.

Daily Prompt: The Cathedral

May27

I’ve had the world’s slowest week of writing. I.e., this is almost all I’ve written, all week, and it’s 686 words. That’s like 1/10 of my normal weekly wordcount.

From [community profile] dailyprompt: “preparing for change,” and “cathedral of data.” It’s misc. post-apoc, based on a Gehenna(*) cult idea I’ve had running in my head for 10 or 20 years.

They had built it, and they had come. The movie misquote was long past archaic by this point, but Tess still found herself thinking it when she stared out over the ramparts and towers of The Library. They had, before the disaster that had ruined their world, designed this place, built it and fortified it and stocked it.

It hadn’t been that they had known the disaster was coming, she assumed (fifteen years old when the world had collapsed, she hadn’t been consulted on the decades of preparation that had led to the library), so much as that they were, by their charter, always planning for change.

So they had built this, The Library, an academy, a town within walls, a cathedral of data. They had built a storage place for all of the knowledge of the world as they knew it, and done everything they could to keep it safe.

Sometimes Tess wondered what the Founders had been planning for. Change, of course. The entire mandate and charter of their foundation was “to prepare for the smoothest transition in times of change.” But that left open a whole realm of things, from a governmental shift of power to a world-ending cataclysm. Had they really expected this?

Expected or not, she could find no fault with their planning. Inside their fortress, they were safe, they were warm in winter and cool in summer, well-fed and well-clothed. Inside the Library, they educated generations of children and young adults, preserving knowledge that would otherwise have been lost, and, through their students, spreading that information across the continent. They had, for their small corner of the world, held off another Dark Age, through their vigilance and preparation.

The job, however, wasn’t over. There was no end point on the foundation’s charter, and the world did not stop changing just because most of the major governments had fallen. And Tess, who had been running the Library and the foundation for longer than she had been alive when the world had ended, who could barely remember what things had been like under a continent-spanning government, found herself second-guessing her predecessors’ plans.

She walked from the high wall down to the main hall of the library, nodding politely at the students as she went. In their comfortable, warm, wooly robes (the sheep and goats, too, lived within the fortress), they looked like a woodcut of medieval monks. And that, Tess believed, was the problem.

It wasn’t that the founders hadn’t planned well; their preparations were impeccable. Tess cringed to think of the billions of dollars, the thousands of man-hours, that had gone into the Library project, resources that the founders had had to burn, that she no longer had. They had built to last, and it had worked.

But what they had built, that was the problem. They had built a temple of knowledge, a chapel with the information of those-who-had-come-before as their god, and students came to worship it, to soak up the knowledge and spread the word of the founders far and wide. It staved off a Dark Age, yes, but what did it leave in its place?

Tess had a feeling, a vague one but supported by research, that there ought to be innovation. People ought to be striving to find new things, create new things, invent new things. People ought to be trying to do what had never been done before, and instead, they were simply retreading old ground. Stagnating. Not falling into barbarism, but not growing, either.

Maybe, she wondered, staring at her robed students, their pens scratching on their paper (both made here, as well as the ink) as they researched the work of long-dead scientists from long-destroyed places, maybe the purpose of a catastrophe was like winter for the trees: a chance to rest, a chance to reset. Maybe by fooling the order of things, the foundation had taken away a necessary step of human evolution.

And maybe they had just slowed it. Change was coming; Tess could feel it in her bones. It was their job to be prepared for it, that was all.

* Okay, “apocalypse.” Onceuponatime, when I played VampireLARP, E.Mc played a character in a Gehenna cult bloodline (Gehenna is the vampires’ end time in World of Darkness), so the phrase always wants to be Gehenna cult in my mind.

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