Tag Archive | 30days
30daysmeme, Fish Story, Tir Na Cali
Day 12 of 30 days of Fiction: “12) Write a scene at a sushi bar.” Tir na Cali, and surprised me.
The sushi bar had a mermaid in its fish tank.
I was new in town, having just recently parlayed my experience with the Agency into a cushy consulting gig and my hazard pay into a nice little house, and I’d decided to check out the local eateries in the days before the gig officially started. People had told me the southern cities were a little out there, and I’d believed them, more or less, but this…
I didn’t bother pretending I wasn’t staring. It was okay, she was staring at me, too. She was, frankly, gorgeous, which means I really got the better end of the deal. Her hair was greenish blue, her eyes the same, her tail darker shades of the same hues. Even her nipples were blue, a silly conceit, but still a nice look. And her slave collar was mother-of-pearl. Of course.
I smiled at her, because what else was I going to do, really? She managed to stop staring at me – the royals of Tir na Cali do not accept deformity in their ranks, and I had the eyes to mark me as theirs, and a leg missing from the thigh down that I wasn’t bothering to camouflage at all. It was August in Southern California; pants would have been too damn warm. A bathing suit would have been too warm. I’d earned my hazard pay, damnit, and the regen would take months of visits, maybe years.
She flicked her tail at me, with a little bit of a smile. I wondered if she missed walking, too. I raised what was left of my left leg to her in a salute..
I wasn’t feeling much like sushi anymore. I ordered a bottle of sake, warmed, and two cups, one for me, and one for the mermaid.
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art for two upcoming e-books, and bedroom carpet for our new-house-to-be.
Donating gets you access to special donor-only posts starting this coming Monday:
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30daysmeme, Princess and Dragon
Day 11 of 30 days of Fiction: “11) Prompt: a dragon and a princess.” Dragons Next Door, and fun.
Juniper and Baby Smith were playing Princess and Dragon. To be fair, because Baby Smith was still very young and not quite up on playing yet, Juniper was playing Princess and Dragon with Baby, but Baby seemed to be having fun and, most importantly, had stopped leaking acidy unpleasantness from both ends.
Her friends at school, even Noni the pixie, had gotten bored with make-believe a couple years ago. All the girls were interested in was make-up and dresses and telling each other’s fortunes and, much to her annoyance, boys. Suddenly every word Juniper said about or to or near her guy friends was subject to scrutiny, numerology, criticism, and questioning. It was obnoxious.
The guys weren’t a lot better; on the playground, they treated Juniper like she was a scout for an invading army. Considering the way the girls were acting, she couldn’t really blame them, but you couldn’t say something like I’m not a girl, I’m just Junie without getting them going with a whole different set of teasing. Mostly, these days, she played with Gortan, whose people didn’t have gender, and Andy and Sera, who were just as confused by the whole thing as she was.
But they didn’t like make-believe either, which left her playing with Baby Smith or her kid brother. Baby Smith was better, and the fact that it was a real dragon just made thing that much cooler. And if she had to change the words that were in the story books a little bit, well, mom said that was okay, too. Stories lived to change.
“Avaunt! Come, friend, where should we adventure today?”
Baby babbled back at her, smiling with many tiny teeth showing.
“To the east, you say? I hear there are…” The book said ogres, but Juniper kind of like the ogres she knew, “auditors there! Away we go!” She made flying noises, vwoosh, vwoosh, and the fair princess warrior and her dragon friend flew off to battle foul beasts.
My current fund-raising goals: art for two upcoming e-books, and bedroom carpet for our new-house-to-be.
Donating gets you access to special donor-only posts starting this coming Monday!
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30 Days Meme: Guitar (weird)
Day 10 of 30 days of Fiction: “10) Write a scene focused around a musical instrument.” Tir na Cali, and a bit weird.
Jolene had never thought that her passable skill with the guitar might end up being her downfall.
Her daddy’d given her that guitar on her sixteenth birthday; it was a very pretty, very expensive instrument, to replace the one he’d tripped over and broken. She cherished, it loved it, and learned to play better than she had ever before, to be close to worth it.
She played in seedy bars and clubs for what money she could earn, doing that as a sideline to stripping in even seedier places, saving up for college, saving up for a real musical education. She wasn’t bad, and she got better every night, but she wasn’t the best, not by a long shot.
So when the handsome man with teeth too smooth and white told her he thought she was the best he’d ever heard, she figured it for a come-on line and didn’t get her hopes up, kept the flirting light and didn’t give him her real number.
That didn’t keep him from drugging her in the alleyway and kidnapping her, of course, but at least she wasn’t disappointed by a fictional record contract.
He dragged her away to a foreign land, locked a collar around her neck, and sold her to a man who demanded that she dance, and demanded that she play for him.
Dance she would do, finding him no more obnoxious and quite a bit cleaner than her former audience, but as for play…
“Not without my guitar.” Beat her, starve her, threaten her, it did not matter. She would not play without her guitar.
“Your instrument is far away, back in America,” her new owner coaxed. “This one is fine, is expensive, cost more than you did” (which was a lie, but she did not know that).
“I won’t play without my guitar,” she insisted. Beaten again, starved more, threatened and cajoled; they could not make her play.
“We will give you your freedom if you will play,” he offered. Another lie, of course, but she did not know that.
“Now without my guitar.” By now, it was a mantra, an echo of the girl she had been, a song of its own.
They looked, then. She hadn’t come cheap, as pretty girls don’t, in Tir na Cali, and she would soon waste to nothing. Pawn shops, music shops, junkyards; they could not find the damn thing. Finally, one of her master’s slaves thought to ask Jolene where she had last seen it, and she laughed, a small and hacking thing.
“In my locker at the club,” she told the hapless servant. There was little left of her; her wounds had become infected. But her master’s agents had finally found her guitar; they paid the club owner fifty dollars for it, and brought the damned thing to the emaciated slave.
“Was it worth it?” her master asked her, as she wrapped around her instrument. She looked up at him with sunken eyes and smiled.
“It’s my guitar,” she told him, and played.
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30daysmeme Roses are Red, Violets are Dead
Day 9 of 30 days of Fiction: “9) Write a scene working from the title ‘Roses are Red, Violets are Dead'”
Jack brought me roses on our first date.
A little clichéd, certainly, thorns and all, but the thing about roses is, even after they dry, they hold their color.
That’s what we were like, Jack and I. The relationship faded over time, lost its fresh bloom, but the friendship lingered.
Kyle brought me daisies and took me to summer theatre in the park.
It was very earthy, pleasant; a nice time, all in all, but with a very short lifespan. A summer romance, if you will.
Daisies look nice, when they dry, if a little flattened, and so did he.
Harold went with calla lilies. The funereal aspect was strange, I’ll admit, but that fit with the macabre theme of the restaurant and movie he picked. The whole date had a strange haze, as it in an old movie, and the lilies yellowed, like a newspaper clipping, like something over.
Martin came with carnations, a bad start before I’d even opened the door. The date itself was tolerable, in a sort of plastic way, as if it came pre-packaged from the store, bow tie and all, and left no aftertaste at all.
Carnations look just as cheap dried as fresh.
Peter’s arms were full of violets, a gesture both over the top and so underdone, as was he. The date was distasteful from start to finish, his hands sweaty, his breath rancid, his come-ons uncouth, underhanded, sneaky, and then intolerable.
Violets just look dead when dried – and so does he.
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30Days Meme, Kink_bingo (sort of), #SmutSunday: Kitty!
Content warning: this creeped me out writing it, a little bit.
![[community profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
kink_bingo – free square – from my card
Day 8 of 30 days of Fiction: “8) Write a scene as a cat”
I wake up when the bright warmth moves off of me, roll over, lick my belly a few times, and move into the bright warmth again, one arm over my face.
For a moment, in the sleepy place that isn’t quite awareness, everything feels strange and wrong. I know that the tail lashing just out of the light should not be there. I know that the fingers on my hand, that the claws on my paw… that they are wrong. Short and stubby and sharp. I know that I used to be different.
Then the warmth urges me back into sleep. I sleep a lot more, now. It gets harder and harder to hold thoughts in my mind for any length of … oh, a dust mote. My eyes open wide and I bat at the ghost swirling in the brightness. It’s taunting me, slipping through my claws like it’s not there. But I can feel it, just at the edges… there! I pounce it to the ground, pin in there, one claw through a gossamer wing.
I swallow it in three quick gulps, leaving a tiny foot to remind myself. While its thin non-substance is in me, I can think. I can focus again. I sit upright, cross-legged – the master stopped observing me regularly weeks ago – and focus.
I can’t read anymore. My eyes can’t track the characters, and whatever he did to my brain makes focusing that fine impossible. The lack of thumbs makes writing nearly impossible, even if I could see the letters. Even if I had paper and pencil. Nor can I speak. But I can, for a few minutes a day, remember. Remember what it’s like to be human.
The thought escapes me again, and I lick my chops, nose at the tiny foot bone, and make my way down to the sandbox.
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30 Days Meme: Forbidden
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.
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30daysmeme, Arguing
Day 6 of 30 days of Fiction: “6) Write a scene with people talking, but without any actual dialog”
This is the direct sequel to Visiting the Neighbors.
My middle child was very persuasive.
I shouldn’t be surprised; she’s her father’s daughter as much as she’s mine. But she, the best and worst of both of us, was leaning every single bit of her not-inconsiderable inherited charm on me. Wheedling. Arguing. Bargaining.
My darling husband, who might have stood a chance, had ceded the field to me, claiming that this counted, in division of labor, as a “mom argument.” Bless him. And I, who was never the charmer they were, was stuck using cold hard logic against all the convincing powers a ten-year-old could put forth.
She wanted to babysit the neighbor’s newly-hatched baby. Not the Halflings down the road, or even the harpy-people, no, my baby girl wanted to babysit a baby dragon. And she was pouring on the pleases and promises and coaxing and sulking.
I’d been married to her father for twenty-five years. I stood there, the immovable object, telling her no. No. It wasn’t safe. It wasn’t even feasible. How could she change a diaper she couldn’t touch? How would she deal with acid spit-up? The thing had a siren cry that made those harpies sound quiet. And her schoolwork was just getting really intense. She was going to need good grades now to get into a good academy.
Still she pled. She’d be good. She’d do the dishes. She’d give half her earnings to charity. It would be good for her applications, inter-species work. After-school job. Responsibility and civic duty. The baby was so cute.
Still I balked. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t healthy, and she wasn’t equipped to handle the needs of a dragon infant. She might hurt the baby. She might get hurt. I might have a heart attack. She could start this Friday.
I mentioned she was very persuasive, right?
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30daysmeme, Visiting the Neigbors
Day 5 of 30 days of Fiction: “5) Write a scene entirely in dialog.”
This is the direct sequel to Hatching, and references “Damn dragons, get off my lawn!”
“I hope the noise isn’t bothering you.”
“Not at all. We were just curious; we’ve never seen a baby dragon before.”
“Oh! Well, come on in, the hatching is nearly over. Mind your step, little Cthannie is teething. Right through here…”
“You’ve done wonders with the place.”
“Oh, well, it had good bones. The ogres didn’t leave much but bones. But it had good bones. And here’s our little darling. Don’t worry, the asbestos diaper will protect you.”
“Oh, eee, adorable! Such tiny little claws and teeth! And those ears!”
“They grow into the ears.”
“And the scales? You two are both such warm, fiery colors, and your baby is blue? I’ve never seen a blue dragon.”
“Darling, you’re being rude.”
“No, not at all. The blue fades after a few months into purple, and shifts to red when they’re nearly grown-up. The middle stage can be a little awkward, though.”
“Oh, you mean like Jimmy? Oh, my, I’m sorry, that was horribly rude.”
“Like Jimmy, yes. Scales peeling, shifting colors in spots. He’s nearly done with the awkward stage now.”
“…”
“…”
“Burrrrrrrraaaap!”
“…”
“…”
“Your baby really is lovely. Do the acid belches last for long?
“Oh, hardly any time at all. Here, let me get that for you. Sorry to be so familiar, but dragon spittle has an acid neutralizer.”
“Somehow, I am not surprised. Congratulations on the newest addition to the Smith family; I think perhaps we should be heading home.”
“Thank you, thank you, and do come over any time.”
“Mommy! Mommy, oooh, ooh, so adorable can I hold it can I please?”
“Ah. Hem. This is our daughter, Juniper. Terribly sorry about that.”
“No problem at all. They seem to be getting along quite well, don’t they?”
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30daysmeme, Hostage Situation (Dragons Next Door Setting0
Day 4 of 30 days of Fiction: “4) Prompt: a hostage situation”
I came home from the library to find my husband and our oldest child watching what we affectionately called “the grown-up TV,” the one we didn’t allow the younger children to watch. They were both frowning, their shoulders curled forward in identical postures of unhappiness (if I didn’t have the evidence of my own senses to rely on, I would doubt that our oldest had any of me at all, so close was the resemblance to my husband). They had been fighting a lot lately, so it had to be something monumental to get them this close, this mutually tensed.
“What is it?” I asked, already dreading the answer.
“Hostage situation downtown,” my husband answered tensely. “The baddie’s claiming if they don’t meet his demands, he’ll eat the hostages.”
“What are his demands?”
“Ketchup,” my oldest answered darkly. My glare got a shrug and an aggrieved “what? I mean, it’s not what they’re saying, but even the ogres didn’t like to eat raw meat without some sort of flavor.”
I turned my attention to my spouse, who is generally more rational than our children. “They’re not telling us, actually. I have a feeling it’s bad.” There was a keening in the back of his throat, like a dog eager to hunt. He might have retired from the force, but they tell me the urges and habits never really fade.
“It’s not a dragon, is it?” I liked the Smiths, and they took that sort of thing hard.
Both of them looked at me oddly. It was my oldest, voice choked, who answered me.
“It’s a human.”
Next: Ketchup
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