Tag Archive | character: autumn

The RoundTree Siblings Prepare for Thanksgiving – Stranded World – Donor Perk

Nov10

This takes place at least a year after the nano-book, and a bit after most of the other stories of this family. Each of the dates, except Gregor, have appeared before.

Winter:
“If it’s too much, I’ll understand.” Encountering his family for the first time was certainly something to be ready for, entirely aside from the cultural connotations of “bringing a girl home to meet his mother.” “But I would love to have your company, and my mother would love to meet Mila and Henry.” He gave Marina his best charming smile. “For all of our oddities, we’re a family of very good cooks.”

“As long as you’re certain it’s no imposition, and as long as I can bring something,” Marina decided, helped, he was sure, by the way her children were bouncing up and down and making puppy eyes at her.

“I’ll be sure to find out what we’re lacking this time. Thank you, Marina. I’m so glad you said yes.”

Summer:
“So,” Bishop said, moving chess pieces around on the back of his notebook. “We’re doing Christmas with Mellie’s family. Spring Break, we’ll spend a couple days with my family. And that leaves Thanksgiving for Summer’s family, right?”

“It’s the only holiday my family really gets together for anyway,” she nodded. “So it’s the best bet for meeting the most of them, and the most fun dates. It’s almost a contest,” she grinned. “Winter usually defaults, and Spring usually wins.”

“Are we your ace in the hole?” Bishop looked like he couldn’t decide whether to be happy about that, or mildly offended. Summer was hoping on happy; it would make everything else easier.

“Yep.” She kissed them both on the cheeks. “My beautiful aces.”

Spring:
“Do both of us a favor, okay, and don’t try to map my family.” She loosened her lover’s tie and deftly traded out his expensive-and-showy cufflinks for another pair, less showy but equally nice. Winter would notice, and her mother would appreciate them.

“It’ll upset them?” He tightened his tie again. He was overdressed for Thanksgiving, so she’d gone a little further out there to complement him.

“It will give you a headache, and amuse them at your expense.”

“Don’t tell me your entire family are tanglers?” He pulled out one of her mis-matched earrings and replaced it with the matching hoop.

“No, no, but they all work with the strands in one way or another, and getting us all together can be… messy.”

“Messy.”

“Yup.”

Autumn:
She stared at the letter for a few minutes longer than required. She’d been fairly certain her Tattercoat lover would say no, but that hadn’t stopped her from asking. Either he’d give in eventually, or get tired of her asking and leave her. Inasmuch as they were together enough for him to leave.

She picked up her phone, then, and dialed. Not Tattercoats. She knew better.

“What is it, my lovely Autumn flower? No, don’t tell me, I can read the calendar. Has that knave you call a lover let you down once again?”

“Gregor….” she protested weakly.

“You know I’m right, lovely girl. And no, I don’t have any other plans for the holiday.”

“Thank you,” she sighed.

“You know I’m always there for you, beautiful.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/169737.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

At the Movie – Stranded Verse – for the Giraffe Call

Oct17

For Skjam‘s prompt.

Stranded World and Autumn, though I don’t know just when. Stranded has a landing page – here (or on LJ)

Commenters: 6

The little town had one of those old-style movie theaters with one viewing room, the sort that showed whatever blockbuster they could get 3 months late and stayed alive mainly because the nearest real theatre was over an hour away.

Autumn could accept that; a lot of small towns had business that stayed open that way. The weird part was – well, the weird part began with the movie on the marquis, which was an unpopular horror movie from three summers back. That everyone in the town – and that was the second weird part – seemed to be going to see, at the 3 o’clock showing. The whole town.

Autumn waited until the 5 p.m. showing, paid the bored ticket-taker, and settled in to her seat. She was the only one in the theatre, as the creepy, badly-edited film worked its way around to the first murder, and the second… and then she wasn’t. A presence settled down into a seat next to her, and the film began to change.

A girl in the theatre. A teenager, alone, hanging out in the movies because there was air conditioning there, and it was 90 degrees out and rising.

A wanderer coming through. No-one hears her scream. No-one notices that she doesn’t leave at the end of the awful movie. No-one notices she’s missing for days, and by then…

Autumn reached for the apparition’s hand. “This isn’t the way,” she told the girl. “Where…?”

Behind the theatre was an old hardware store, with a basement no one went into anymore. In the back of the basement, in a barrel full of rusting nails…

“I’ll tell them,” she murmured. “I’ll make sure they notice.”

Slowly, the movie flickered, broke, and went black. Slowly, the apparition faded away. Autumn patted where the girl’s shoulder had been, and headed out to make an anonymous phone call.

Had the town noticed, she wondered? Had they known what they were doing? Or had the girl been calling out for help, drawing them all in, without anyone knowing what was going on?

While she dialed from the town’s old-style phone booth, Autumn drew a small glyph into the crook of her arm. Remembrance. She would take the girl with her – Amy, the fading missing poster told her – she would take Amy with her in her memories, and leave her story to be told by those who loved her – with a little nudge to get them going.

“Hello? I think there’s a body in the basement of the old hardware store.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/150564.html. You can comment here or there.

Rude Roommates – Stranded World/Autumn – Giraffe Call for Prompts

Oct15

For Wyld_dandelyon‘s prompt.

Stranded World and Autumn, though I don’t know just when. Stranded has a landing page – here (or on LJ)

Commenters: 7

“No, I don’t mean walking through a ghost will give you a chill, or take ten years off your life, or any of that sort of nonsense. I mean it’s rude.” Autumn pursed her lips at the difficult man who was, of all things, arguing with her about the paranormal while trying to haggle her down on a particularly complex original piece of art. A charmed piece, at that, which suggested to her that he knew more than he was saying about both the art and the paranormal.

“Rude?” He raised an eyebrow in what had to be a studied expression of disdain. “You’re talking about being rude to the dead?”

And now she had him. She smirked at him, and set aside the artwork, which would find its proper home in due time. “Well, sir, that’s a common thread throughout many cultures, isn’t it? It’s certainly considered rude to ‘speak ill of the dead,’ for one; it’s considered proper to honor a dying person’s wishes, and we pay homage to the dead in their cemeteries, do we not?”

He could tell he’d been out-maneuvered, but he was certainly going somewhere with this.

“Well, if it’s rude to walk through them, then we’re talking about dealing with them like they’re people, right? Then isn’t it rude of them to stick around a house they no longer own?”

The dead care nothing for deeds and titles would be the easy answer, but it was not, for all its ease, honest. Autumn’s frown came back, and she could feel it wrinkling her brow. “The dead don’t ‘stick around’ because they want to trespass,” she countered. There was a piece of art for this – and she hadn’t known why she was inking it, but she’d done it, framed it, priced it, and then put it on a shelf under her workbench. She pulled it out, now, the twist of the Ways suggested with the way the trees and the house closed together. “I think you’d like this piece better than the one we were discussing,” she continued, in apparent non sequitur. “And if you wish to continue discussing spectral roommates, perhaps the nice coffee place down the road, after the festival closes?”

“Moon-beans? Certainly. Nine tonight, then?” He didn’t balk at the too-high price on the smaller piece of art, passing her his credit card without further discussion. Amos Talbot. The name suited him.

“Thank you, sir.” She nodded politely, and wondered if she’d just set up a date or an appointment for an exorcism.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/147945.html. You can comment here or there.

Spring and Autumn: Orange Juice

Oct12

To skysailor‘s prompt “Orange Juice;” this comes after Having Fun.

Stranded Verse has a Landing Page (Lj

“Orange Juice.” Autumn thumped the mugs down on the tiny table in her tiny RV, the noise causing her little sister to cringe. “Patented hangover cure: ghetto mimosas and a big pile of hash browns.”

“You are a cruel, cruel woman,” Spring complained. She was still half in the garb she’d gone out in the day before, hay in her hair and mud on her hem. It had been a long afterparty and a beautiful night – and the man had been beautiful, too, with those leather pants and the wicked way he swung the whip, never mind that he was easily old enough to be her father.

“I am a sensible, sensible woman,” Autumn replied. She had, as far as Spring could tell, quaffed her share and danced just as long as anyone, although Spring had found her alone in her bunk this morning. “Drink your orange juice and know your sister loves you.”

Spring downed the glass in one swallow, barely tasting the fizz and the vodka, the whisper of a Strand-pull tickling the back of her throat. “That’s one hell of a hangover cure,” she complained. “What’s in the potatoes? Dynamite?”

“Tabasco and penicillin,” her sister answered mildly. “I like the mule-skinner as much as the next girl…”

“I’m always careful. Well, except for about the bite marks.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/144476.html. You can comment here or there.

Autumn…

Sep25

Iconflash! Today’s icon:

Stranded World, Autumn.

Icon by [personal profile] dhamphir

This is the prequel to Love Letters and Colder Weather, and comes after this story.

Guys, I am ensaddened that Meeks’ sketch of Autumn (DW) has not yet received the 6 commentors required to get a clean-up. So, for every comment, signal boost, or donation this (or any of her sketches of my stories) get, I will write 100 more words of this story.

“Lady Fall, again?”

“You’re always wishing me ill,” Autumn answered without turning. It let her hide the ridiculously gleeful smile. “Tattercoats, I did not think to see you again so soon.”

“And if you don’t turn around, Lady Fall, you shan’t see me at all. Do you require assistance with thy booth?”

“I never require assistance, but a bit of help would be a boon, aye. I thought you were headed to points west.” She hopped down from the railing she was perched on and handed him a box of art, still not, yet, looking him in the face. If she did, he’d see how overjoyed she was to see him.

“Ah, but is not this west of where we last met?”

“Mostly South,” she countered. “Those go on the back wall, if you would, sirrah.”

“And you are determined to turn that lovely shoulder to me cold, Lady Fall. Why is that, prithee?”

Because you’re as constant as the wind, and as flighty. She busied herself with a box for a moment. “Because, Sir Tattered, you lied to me, and I am displeased. And whether you merely fudged the truth or spun a web, thy intent was to deceive.”

Thanks, [profile] xjenavivex!

“You wound me, Lady.” He smirked at her, thinking she couldn’t see him through the pile of curtains she was holding. “I swear to you, I had no intention of deceiving you.”

She stepped back on the rail to hang the gauzy strips of cloth. “I don’t believe you.” She let her voice go flat, hoping he’d catch the cue to drop the games.

Tattercoats had never missed a cue in his life. Summer would love to have him on stage with her. “Then I’m truly sorry, Autumn. But I didn’t know until two days past that I was coming.”

Thanks, [personal profile] kelkyag!

She set down her burden and studied his face. He could lie like a pro, of course; it came with the job. But… she let her eyes travel down, from his very-sincere expression to his hand, and the lace at the edges of his cuffs, sticking out of the edges of the patchwork coat that gave him his nickname. There were, if she looked very closely, strands of a charm woven into the lace. Ana-Marie of Myrkfaelinn did work like that, sometimes – but only for people who knew what to ask for, or for her lovers. Which was he?

Thanks rix_scaedu

He followed her glance, and ostentatiously straightened his cuffs, and then his coat, so she could see the lines of embroidery with strands woven stealthily into them, and the identifying glyph half-buried in mud on the hem. “You wear yours out where everyone can see,” he explained apologetically. “I’ve never been that bold.”

“Very few can read it,” she answered uncertainly, tracing the glyph twisted among her body art. “I didn’t know that you could.” What else had he been hiding from her?

“I didn’t know until just now that you were for real.” His downcast eyes were apologetic – truth? Or another lie?

Thanks [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith!

“‘For real?’” she asked incredulously. “What else would I be, wearing the mark out like this , drawing it into my art, hanging it out like a banner?”

“A tourist. A hobbyist, the sort who read about it in a book somewhere. A scholar, taking on a role for the Faire. That you wear it so obviously – I’m sorry, Lady Fall, but that’s what made me think that you were a pretender. My people, we don’t wave flags about saying that we’re Strand-Walkers. We keep the signs more private.

“Your people?” Strand-Walkers. She had heard that term before.

Thanks [personal profile] finch!

He smiled, perhaps a bit sadly. “My people,” he agreed, “as secretive as yours seem to be open.”

That rang like an accusation, and made her shoulders twitch. “You assume,” she murmured. Strand-Walkers. Strand-Walkers… ah. Yes. They shared some kinship, then, though it was a back-door-relations sort of thing at best. “Unless you are lumping me in with Ana-Marie.”

“Ana… Ah. No. She speaks in so many lies that the truth is lost among the tangles.”

Autumn stared at him for a moment, and then let the laugh bubble out. “You make it sound as if she’s the only one.”

Thanks ellenmillion!

It took him a moment, but then he echoed her laugh. “I see your point.” He bowed, one of his deep, floor-sweeping bows. “Your pardon, m’lady.” His voice sounded more serious as he continued. “You were offended by my assumption of openness on your part, or my assumption on who your people were?”

Which had offended her? She frowned at him, piecing together he own reactions.

“Neither, and both.” She hand-waved at his growing smirk. “You assume you know me. Until I read correctly the patterns in your lace, you thought you knew me. You assume again, based on what?”

Thanks jenny_evergreen!

“Based on what you have written on your skin,” he answered, infuriatingly calmly.

“Even though your first assumptions there were wrong?” All of her joy at seeing him here was gone, replaced by a desire to strangle him until he shut up. “Even though you thought I was a fake because of those marks?”

“Even though,” he agreed. “Because, if you are not a fake, then you are either a liar – and I don’t believe you are that, Lady Fall – or you know what you have inked into your skin, and what it means.”

She glared at him for his portentousness. “And what do you think it means?”

Thanks idea_fairy!

Finally, she seemed to have made him uncomfortable. He folded his hands, letting the lace fall over them – which, she noted, made certain Strands fall into a charm of some sort – and looked down at the lace. “Well,” he coughed, “we get back to the matter of keeping secrets.”

“We are still,” she shook her head at him warningly, “on the matter of your assumptions and beliefs about me. Are you worried you will tell me something I don’t already know, Tattercoats?”

“Well, I don’t know what you know,” he admitted.

“And so you assume ignorance. Again.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/132275.html. You can comment here or there.

Tattercoat Bard

Sep16

New flash series! I’m going to write one flash for every Icon I have, over 4 LJ accounts, 1 DW, and a whole bunch of not-currently-in-use, until I get bored or run out of icons.

(Yes, if you want to make me an icon to get me to write a flash about it, you can. In that case, I’ll even write 2x as much!)

I’m starting with DW, in alphabetical order. Today’s icon:

Stranded World, Autumn.

Icon & Art by Djinni

Also [community profile] dailyprompt “perched precariously on a ladder” and “beautiful morning”.

This is the prequel to Love Letters and Colder Weather.

“Beautiful morning, m’lady.” The bard passing through waved up at Autumn, who, perched precariously on a ladder, was trying to get her sign hung.

“You hast a strange idea of beautiful,” she muttered; the sky was threatening rain and the wind was ripping at her sign. And he… she glanced at him again, as he climbed up the other side of her booth and reached for the sign. “Thou’rt new, too.”

“Nay, for ‘new’ would suggest someone who was planning to stay, and I am but a vagabond knave, a tattercoat bard.” He sketched a one-handed bow. “They call me Ian the Inglorious.”

“I’m sure they do,” she smirked. “They call me Autumn.”

“That time of year thou mayst in me behold,/When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang,” he recited, and then shook his head. “Nay, thou art ‘more lovely and more temperate’ than even a summer’s day, and no more agéd than a Spring morn.”

“Thou art truly golden-tongued,” she murmured, but he had gotten her sign straightened while he mangled the Bard. “But Spring and Summer art my sisters, and I am the leaves that fall in harvest time.”

“But I hear,” he continued, leaping down from his perch to offer her an entirely unnecessary hand, “that the fruits of early Autumn are the sweetest, the best for the longer to savor them, to wait. And I, Lady Autumn, have been waiting for your like for quite some time.”

Savoring the flattery, Autumn took his hand.

~~

Tattercoats is abusing Shakespeare’s Sonnets 18 and 73.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/129329.html. You can comment here or there.

Kith and Kin

Sep2

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “25) write a story set in a library.”

Stranded World (LJ), Autumn

The weather was brutal, and the festival had been more-or-less cancelled. Autumn had still shown up, still set up her booth, but once she lost two pieces to the wind-blown rain, she gave up and closed up shop. Nobody was coming out in this weather, anyway.

There wasn’t much in the small town to do – a café, three churches, and a Chinese-take-out-place – so she headed for the library, ducking in just as the rain began coming down in buckets. She stood dripping in the lobby for a moment, not wanting to endampen the books.

“Oh, you poor dear!” A woman in her middle-second-century or so that had to be the librarian bustled out with a towel, wrapping it around Autumn’s shoulders. “Are you here with the festival? That poor, silly farce of a festival?” She moved her free hand surreptitiously in a pattern that, to a layperson, would probably just look like nervous hand-fluttering.

Autumn could see the strands she was pulling, though, warming the air around them, pulling the water out of it, as she patted the towel. “The festival, yes,” she nodded, wondering why it had been a poor, silly farce. “And I have kin in the area, I’ve heard.”

That gained her a sharp look, and then, moving the towel away, a very sharp look at the inkings along her collarbones. “I see,” she murmured, much of the fluttery-old-lady gone. “Yes, I imagine you do. Come in, dear, and have some tea, and I’ll show you our Archives.”

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 (LJ)
23) write a scene that takes place in a place that is war-torn (LJ)
24) prompt: founding fathers (LJ)
25) write a story set in a library

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/124512.html. You can comment here or there.

Vocabulary – New Word of the Day (for the 7th) – Pastiche

Aug10

I took this vocabulary test, and was, being me, a bit miffed at the words I didn’t know. But I wrote them down, so I have a new word-a-day for the next month! (I’m not sure how I didn’t know this one, honestly)

Today’s word is Pastiche

1: a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work; also : such stylistic imitation
2 a : a musical, literary, or artistic composition made up of selections from different works : potpourri
b : hodgepodge
— pas·ti·cheur noun

Origin of PASTICHE
French, from Italian pasticcio

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pastiche?show=0&t=1312997828

This one was actually hard to find a setting to use it in.

Dinner was, because we were feeling artistic, a pastiche: Indian spice mixes, Polish sausage, Japanese rice. American-grown wine of German grapes topped it off.

Not quite… Hrmm..

“Your work seems to be a pastiche, an imitation of several famous styles…” The customer, probably a college kid and his eyes trailing over Autumn’s tattoos rather than the art on the table, kept going, but Autumn had stopped paying attention. When he stopped talking, she asked, as gently as she had patience for (not much; it had been a long day and her feet hurt),

“So, you like it?”

He coughed, and blushed crimson. “…yeah.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/104427.html. You can comment here or there.