Tag Archive | 30days

30 Days Second Semester: 22, White Knights?

Aug31

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “22) Prompt: White Knight

Fae Apoc, Addergoole, Year 23 (a generation after the story)

Audra never saw whose foot tripped her – she had been studying the paintings on the walls, her head, as her brother would say – in the clouds – but she noticed the boy who offered her a hand up. He was, she had to admit, rather handsome, even if the single black curl hanging in his face looked a little silly.

“Thank you,” she said, as he helped her to her feet, and then, because it seemed like thanks were kind of lame, she said the next thing that came to her head. “My mother told me all the white knights were dead.”

“They aren’t,” a voice from behind her rumbled. “But you have to know where to find them.”

The boy in front of her tensed, a frown coming across his face like a cloud. Audra turned, carefully, setting her back to the wall as she’d been taught, to see the other… rescuer?

“And where would I look for them?” she asked the pale-skinned tall boy with the prominent nose.

“Right here,” the first one insisted. “I’m Carrig, by the way.”

“Carrig,” the second one inserted warningly, “there’s something to be said for not misrepresenting yourself. Miss, I’m Chaney.”

“Audra,” she answered, feeling less and less rescued and more trapped between two dragons. “sh’Kailani,” she added, feeling petulant. See: the new student wasn’t entirely ignorant of the Laws.

“Pleased to meet you, Audra,” Chaney smiled. “Need help finding your room?”

She looked between the two of them uncertainly. “Yes?” she offered. It was going to be an interesting year.

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story (LJ)
18) prompt: a step too far (LJ
19) write a story in which something goes BOOM. )LJ)
20) Write the end of the story ‘The Purple Bag. (LJ)
21) Roll a d20 twice. Combine the themes of the two previous stories for those numbers. (LJ)
22) Prompt: White Knight

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/123052.html. You can comment here or there.

30 Days Second Sem, Waiting Uncomfortably, Tir Na Cali Harem

Aug29

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “21) Roll a d20 twice. Combine the themes of the two previous stories for those numbers.” I got #14 & #17; this follows after #14, Preparing the Stage.

Tir Na Cali, in the Harem sub-setting – landing page here (and on LJ)

Content warning: bondage and mild violence

Stephan squirmed uncomfortably against his bindings, wondering what he’d done this time. He and Lady Ursula had, he thought, been getting along relatively well this week. He’d been trying – his pride squirmed, too, at how much he’d been trying, but she was the boss – to live up to her occasionally-cryptic and frequently-foreign expectations, had been sure to only mouth off in private, and had a long notebook of orders she’d given him, which he did his best to obey (although their sometimes-conflicting nature made that tricky).

But he still found himself strapped to a St. Andrew’s Cross (not what they called it here, but what he knew it as, and damned if he needed another word for “thing he got tied to when they wanted to whip him”), his toes barely touching the ground, more weight than was comfortable hanging from his shoulders, facing the plain white wall while, behind him, the sadist who took care of the leather gear tested her whips, cracking them in the air.

“I…” he tried, even though he knew it was stupid. Bettie casually flicked the end of the flogger against his inner thigh: a warning that left his skin stinging. He fell silent. What had he done wrong? If he was going to be punished, it would be nice to know why. “Please,” he said hurriedly, before she could hit him again, “do you know why I’m here today?”

Bettie patted his shoulder. “Sometimes,” she said gently, “they’re just having a bad day.”

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story (LJ)
18) prompt: a step too far (LJ
19) write a story in which something goes BOOM. )LJ)
20) Write the end of the story ‘The Purple Bag. (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/121268.html. You can comment here or there.

30 Days Second Semester: 20, The End of The Purple Bag, Misc-misc

Aug26

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “20) Write the end of the story ‘The Purple Bag.'”

misc-misc, no setting

Almost there. Although the temptation was strong to just end her trip here, in the dusty, beautiful bazaar, she’d come too far to stop before the end. Sorrell reached into the bag, wiggling her fingers around. When she’d started this trip, there’d barely been room to get her fingertips through the opening. Now, she had to reach all the way past her elbow into the netherspace.

The trinket that came to her hand was tiny; no wonder it had gotten pushed to the bottom. She pulled it out carefully, studying it.

A puzzle ring, nine interlocking rings twisted carefully together, held by a single bronze pin. A ring. Sorrell stared at it, wondering what its story would be, wondering where it would take her. She had been so many places, on so many worlds, finishing so many lost quests. To have it all come down to a ring…

…no Elvish writing, thank God…. Still.

“Excuse me.” The man’s voice sounded familiar; she turned slowly, hoping he wasn’t an enemy left over from some quest.

Stunning golden eyes looked down at her. “You have my ring.”

“Your…” she looked at the ring in her hands. She knew those eyes. “I found your lamp.”

“You did, thank you. And allowed me to return to my home.” He gestured grandly at the bazaar and the city beyond. “And now you have found my ring, and given it a home.”

She glanced down at her finger, where she’d absently set the puzzle ring.

“…oh.”

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story (LJ)
18) prompt: a step too far (LJ
19) write a story in which something goes BOOM. )LJ)
20) Write the end of the story ‘The Purple Bag.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/118872.html. You can comment here or there.

June Again –> Boom: 30 Days Second Sem, Addergoole, Abduc. prompts.

Aug25

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “19) write a story in which something goes BOOM.”

Also for the Abduction Prompts: here

Cya/Cynara is a RP character from the Addergoole roleplay. Her Wiki page is here This takes place sometime post-year-9 but before-the-apoc.

June again. Cynara packed the boys off to school, called the younger’s father to remind him to pick them up afterward, then spent a good couple hours helping Hroderich move into his own apartment. He was a good kid, got along well with her sons, but, well, like his brothers, wasn’t really into girls.

Once she had him tucked in, with one last you-were-a-good-Kept hug and a now-be-a-good-man punch in the arm, she double-checked her packing and started driving.

It was a ten-hour-drive from Hroderich’s new place to the Village outside of Addergoole. Cya found it meditative, a way of spring-cleaning her brain of the cobwebs and trailed her most recent Kept had left, of sweeping out the dust of former loves and lovers. She slept at a motel halfway there – the old lady winked at her. Didn’t know what she was up to, but after four years of this trip, recognized her. Cya smiled back at her, left her the tray of cookies, and slept.

It was late morning on move-out day when she drove into the Village and started waking up her power. If she let it ride most of the time, she could push it, times like this, ask it to Find things that were esoteric and a bit vague. Find me the boy I can take home with me, she asked it. Someone who’ll fall for it, someone who might need it.

The tugging in her head was like a compass. This way. Down Main Street and up the hill, to the gate of Maureen’s house. Hunh. A linen shirt and a thatch of auburn, a bit untidy, khakis and no shoes. Leaning against the outside fence, staring in.

She leaned up next to him, studying the kid-pack playing there, picking out the girl that was probably his.

“She’s lovely,” she murmured. When his attention turned reluctantly to her, she offered a hand. “Cynara.”

“Pellinore.” His grip was firmer than his effete look suggested, and she swallowed a smile. Ambrus’ sons were fun.

~~

Pellinore had accepted Cynara’s offer of a ride; his mother’s home, the only place he knew other than Addergoole, was only a day’s drive from the school, and his mother, in a state of denial, it seems, had left him to find his own way home.

It took him about an hour to realize that something was up, an hour they spent cheerfully gossiping about Addergoole professors and ignoring any of the really uncomfortable topics, such as who’s the bitch who won’t let you get near your daughter? or so, who Owned you and how bad was it?. Mike seemed a safe topic, so they joked about cy’Linden, and cy’Luca, and how some things never changed.

And then he happened to notice (because she allowed him to; she had practice, by now, at very subtle Mind Workings) that they were going very fast down a road in the wrong direction to get him home, and his Addergoole-honed caution reminded him that she, too, had gone through the School of Hell.

He didn’t stop to ask questions, she gave him that. He began rattling off a combat Working as fast as he could speak, pointing at the road beyond the car.

Boom! A wall of force and earth began rolling towards them with a crack like thunder. Cya swerved to miss it while she muttered her own working, destroying the earth wall with another boom and then throwing in a fast mind-control while he was still trying to make her emotions twist.

“Stop,” she said, as gently as she could with his created panic twisting inside her. “Release the Workings.”

He stared at her sullenly, her control forcing obedience, his own panic clearly rising. Torn by his resemblance to another son of Ambrus, she patted his knee. “Look at it this way,” she offered. “It could be a lot worse.”

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story (LJ)
18) prompt: a step too far (LJ
19) write a story in which something goes BOOM.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/117884.html. You can comment here or there.

30days Second Sem / Abduction Prompts / Scent / The Generation Ship

Aug24

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “18) prompt: a step too far.”

In the same world/ship as Evolution and All Green Dots. Short version: Alae is the ceremonial Queen on a generation ship; Eka is her partner.

“Trepp, Alae, it smells like stale piss.” They had both been on edge lately, vibrating with the tension of the ship, with the political maneuverings that threatened both of them, feeling crammed in even Alae’s larger cubic and not spending any hour aside from work apart. The perfume had been the cracked cog that had thrown them out of working order. “Do you own a scent that can’t be smelled in the next star system?”

It was a step too far, enough to send Alae storming out into the corridors, alone and without a weapon, stomping through the ship like a force of nature, ready to rip the panels off anyone who got in her way.

Jol Ruinson was the hapless fool who crossed her path first, a hydrologist from the upper port quadrant. “Alae, your Majesty,” he oozed. He always oozed, like he was half-liquid himself. “Have you come to recant your refusal? Have you seen the light?”

“Hardly,” she snapped. “Jol, I will marry you when the void is safe to breathe, when the ship stops moving, when our water falls from blue skies. I’ll marry you when myths are true, and not before.”

She could tell the moment the words were out of her mouth that it was too much, too far. She had been turning him down (and a half-dozen others) since she moved out of the crèche, but she had always been polite. Today…

“Your perfume smells like piss, your Majesty,” he snarled, one hand going for her hair and the other, holding a taser she hadn’t noticed, for her ribs.

She didn’t lose consciousness until he dragged her until the dark.

And for Eseme’s prompt wanting to see a rescue in this setting:

“You have got to be treppin’ kidding me,” Eka shouted, her voice echoing off the corridors. “It’s a finite space, a ship. How can you not find. One. Woman. In. A. Spaceship?”

The police squirmed uncomfortably under her barrage. “Engineer,” one of them began, another quickly interrupting, “Princess.” She turned to the third, waiting to see how he’d address her.

“Eka,” he said quietly. “There are seven hundred fifty thousand people on this ship, and the cubic to match. We are doing everything we can to find Alae.”

She stared at him levelly for a moment, then, reluctantly, nodded. Everything we can. “All right,” she agreed quietly, “but, perhaps, you’re not doing everything I can.”

It only took a few minutes to convince the beleaguered officers to go along with her plan, and another half hour to set up the scanners to do what she wanted. The planners of the Zimmer had taken great pains to limit surveillance to the large public-gathering sites, valuing privacy where personal space was inherently limited. But the life-support systems were fine-tuned, able to deflect the smallest variations. Eka doubted anyone had used the system to track their lover’s perfume before. It took the scanners fifteen minutes to isolate the trail.

The supply corridor had been blocked off in a remodel two generations past, the only access a panel that had been unscrewed. In the space behind – half the size of Eka’s apartment – Alae and her captor lay, dimly lit by the standby lights. The engineer princess dove forward, heedless of weapons, to gather her Queen in her arms.

“I told you,” she murmured, “your perfume was a bit strong.”

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story (LJ)
18) prompt: a step too far

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/117747.html. You can comment here or there.

30 Days Second Semester: 17, Misery Loves…

Aug23

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “17) write an uncomfortable story.”

Faerie Apocalypse (LJ Link), Addergoole Year Nine, the day after “Say Yes.” (LJ).

Thorburn seemed jittery and uncomfortable on Wednesday, as if somehow he’d been the one to get the wrong end of Tuesday night. It grated on Ceinwen, set her teeth on edge. What right did he have to play the victim?

“I still hate you, you know,” she informed him, since he wouldn’t let her leave the room.

“Stop saying that,” he snapped, without looking away from his homework.

Bereft of even that pleasure, she pulled up a second chair and sat next to her Keeper, staring at him. He was Masked, handsome, his dreads tidy, his eyes improbably hazel-green. “You’ve never shown me,” she said abruptly. If she was going to be uncomfortable, she’d find a way to share it. “Even on Hell Night, you kept your Mask up.”

He frowned, closing his book, finally, to look at her. She plowed on, a little nervously.

“I know there are people without physical Changes, one or two of them, at least. And I know that some aren’t visible with their clothes on, but I’ve…” she swallowed hard and forced herself to continue, “seen you with your clothes off. No Changes. Why haven’t you shown them to me?”

He was still frowning, and she struggled against the urge to quail backwards. His orders last night left her uncomfortable with talking about what had happened, but this… if he wanted her to stop, he’d tell her.

“I mean…”

“When you Change,” he interrupted her. “When you Change, I will show you. I promise.”

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/116889.html. You can comment here or there.

30 Days Second Semester: 16, Coming Home

Aug22

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip.”

John Stollich never knew, when he got home from a tour, what would greet him. Sometimes he thought that was why he stayed on the road as long as he did, coming home only, really, to cut another CD. He’d come home one time, and Onyx would be wrapped around his leg, best-daughter-ever, happy to see him, chattering about what she was learning in school, don’t-ever-leave-again-Dad. The next time, she’d be distant and chill, or flat-out nasty.

The nannies weren’t any better. At best, they lasted a year, year and a half. It was either John that turned them off, or Onyx, or the sometimes-strange things that happened around her, or her insatiable and incorrigible curiosity.

Bringing her on the bus had, because of that curiosity, never been a good option. He did so for very short periods of time, when the bus had been well-scrubbed and censored. The last thing he wanted to do was explain to a prepubescent kid what condoms were for.

He braced himself, getting rid of all thoughts of condoms, groupies, and drugs, and opened his front door. Was this going to be good visit, or a bad one?

She wasn’t in the living room waiting, which was new – generally the nanny brought her down. Instead, his manager, Ray, sat there, frowning.

“What is it this time?” John dropped his duffle bag and waited.

“She ran off again.”

“Damnit, Ray, what is this, seven times?”

“Fourteen.” He paused, then added, reluctantly, “Her aunt called again.”

I present another reboot, for a setting written so long ago I can’t find the original (which itself was a reboot). Onyx-Black and the fanfic of doom.

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/116122.html. You can comment here or there.

30 Days Second Semester: 15, Climbing.

Aug19

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “15) prompt: ascension.”

The stairs twisting up the side of the mountain are a metaphor for the way my people came to their feet from the water below, climbing to ascendance. They are a defense against intruders, who must fight their way up the stairs against massed defenders. They are a meditation and a history book, our stories carved into their walls, an allegorical journey as well as a physical one.

To my “guests,” however, they were a very long set of stairs, over a mile of ascent and half again that much for the way they twist and turn, an exhausting climb after their ordeal. I wondered when they had last eaten, and how well; I wondered, with more concern, how physically unfit they were. Their ordeal here would tax them, and they would need all of their strength. If they weren’t up to it, it would, in the end, come down on me. I’d picked them.

That would come later. For now, I guided them into a landing, where a fountain bubbled fresh water. “We can rest here for a while.”

I was not, myself, feeling the climb; nor were the guards, who walk these stairs every day. The stairs from the great dining hall to my tower bedroom were nearly half the height of the great stairs, after all, my people are built for endurance. You can not swim the flood if you can’t manage stairs.

I sipped the sweet water and watched them pant, worrying for their future.

As I chewed over this story, I had setting after setting going through my head. Then I said, “hey, I have a setting involving a giant stairway already!”

This is a reboot, not a new scene, for the Flood setting I used to write

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/112418.html. You can comment here or there.

30days Second Semester, Preparing the Stage, Cali

Aug17

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter”

Tir Na Cali, in the Harem sub-setting – landing page here (and on LJ).

Bettie was very proud of her inventory. She kept each piece in pristine condition, clean, oiled, free of defect, hung in its proper spot, ready for her hand, or that of the Lady or Lord that called for it.

There was, she mused, not that much difference between her and the harem-keepers. They all kept their inventories ready; they all served the same niche. And they all, in the end, worked on the same slaves.

She laid out her floggers and restraints. The Lady Ursula had called for some supplies this evening; she wanted to be certain everything was perfect.

Mink oil came first. The best floggers and whips were made of leather, firm enough to hurt, but giving enough not to break the skin. They needed to be cared for (and sometimes, even so, blood needed to be cleaned off as well), oiled, smoothed, made supple. They needed to be as good as they could be.

She worked the oil into her favorite three floggers. Stephan made the best noises with the heaviest flogger, so she worked that one up first. Perhaps the Lady would have another choice, maybe the delicate one more likely to leave welts but easier to swing. She oiled that one, too, and then moved on to the restraints.

The leather needed oiling, the buckles a bit of buffing. They took a lot of wear, but, with care, would long out-last their wearers. Bettie was very proud of her inventory, and, she thought, took better care of it than the harem-keepers did of theirs.

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter

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30 Days Second Semester: 11, Remember the Tale

Aug16

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “13) re-write a story that everyone knows.”

Misc-urban-fantasy, maybe misc-post-apoc.

The streets between Roana’s house and her grandmother’s weren’t safe anymore, and everyone knew it. The Wolves had marked their territory, eight blocks of wasteland surrounding what had once been a pretty park. Anyone caught in there was fair game, especially not wearing their colors. And no-one wore the Wolves colors they hadn’t marked themselves.

But going around added an extra hour to her trip, an hour which went through only nominally safer territory. After all, the Wolves at least showed you their teeth. So she put on red – nobody wore Red in this city, Red was passé – her kerchief and her coat. It was supposed to snow, but she hadn’t seen her grandmother in weeks.

The first couple blocks were fine. Neutral territory, what people called The Mother-Land. Mothers with big guns and bigger voices kept this area clear of violence.

She knew the moment she stepped into the Wolves’ territory. The stink was unmistakable, even without the tagging, even without the gloom and the way the world seemed to twist in the shadows. She kept her chin high and kept walking.

Where do you go, little Red? Go home.
The streets here aren’t safe, and you’re all alone.

The streets whispered to her, taunted her, called to her. She kept walking.

What’s in the bag, little Red? Turn around
Scurry on home, now, don’t make a sound.

She could hear their voices, calling from the ruined fire escapes, calling from the windows, whispering from the alleys. She knew no one would be there if she turned, so she kept walking, chin up, determined.

Under your coat, little Red, let us in,
We want to taste that pretty white skin.

The park was the worst, the barking yaps of the Wolves following her in there. Every shadow could hide a monster, but she kept on. The brambles grabbed her jacket, but she kept going. The roots tried to trip her, but she kept on.

Such pretty eyes, little Red, can’t you see?
How hot our hunger is, how big our teeth?

She tugged her coat a little tighter, knowing it was coming. Knowing that they’d strike at the old fountain. Knowing that they wouldn’t remember they myth, remember why she wore red.

“Run away girl, pretty Red, run away.” The Wolf that stepped out of the shadows would be their alpha, biggest of the batch. None of the others would bother them until he was done.

“Hurry home now, and be safe, safely stay,” he sang. He remembered the words, at least. Did he remember the rest.

“I’m just going to my Grandmother’s,” she told him. “Through the woods and o’er the fountain.”

“But there are wolves in the woods, little Red, aren’t you scared?” he leered. His teeth were big, and sharp, and yellow.

“I don’t worry, Wolf, that I’ll be spared.” The myth had a life of its own, here in the dark, here on the edge of the bridged fountain. “And you’ve forgotten the end of the story.”

“What’s in the bag, little Red? Run and run,” he crooned, “Or stay right here, leave me my fun.”

She reached into the bag for the first time, stepping towards him. Here, right here, yes. He crossed the bridge towards her, ready to leap. He couldn’t turn this down, not a Wolf, not in the Woods, not with her red hood.

“Under your coat, little Red, let me in. I want to taste that pretty white skin.” At “skin,” he lept, and she swung, reversing the axe, hitting him in the stomach with the butt end. He went flying, and she stepped delicately down off the fountain, to eye the crumbled man. She set her axe to his throat, letting him feel how sharp it was.

“Don’t you remember?” she smiled at him, “How the story ends?”

“The woodcutter…” he gasped.

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