This did not turn out quite like I intended. Like, within a mile of it.
Post-apoc fae apoc, Cya (the woman), and an unknown viewpoint male fae.
🚐
He was not, not exactly, stalking her.
For one, he already knew where she lived.
Everyone in this area of the world knew where she lived.
They might not have put one and one together and realized that she was who lived there, but she did not always bother with a disguise, and that particularly red hair was like a flag.
Like a beacon. Continue reading
Early in Cloverleaf-era
Sometimes, Cya thought her power had a sense of humor.
She’d learned how to craft specific Find requests, because, if she wasn’t looking for something or someone specific (“nearest unbroken Bleach DVD;” “Leo”), her power had a bad habit of leading her on wild goose chases.
Like today. Like “nearest cache of intact, unclaimed books in an accessible-by-me location, with at least two times the number of unique, intact books as the hours I drive to get there.”
Almost every one of those clauses, she’d added on after learning the hard way that her power could be painfully literal.
Today… today she was staring down at a 45-degree incline that had once been the floor of this library. From the looks of things, it had been tolerably sheltered from weather – this area wasn’t as cold or as wet as Cloverleaf, but it still did get precipitation – and peering down and over, she was pretty sure she’d be able to get more than the required 16 books out of here.
But first, she had to get down there, gather the books, and get back up. Continue reading
Inspired by Life Extension, by Isaac Arthur.
…People will obviously still leave jobs, but they’re no longer retiring.
You are not going to get the management slot when Sally retires in two years, you are not inheriting Dad’s business, at least not for several centuries.You’re not inheriting his house either.When he does die odds are good he will have several thousand descendants kicking around.
You also now have a de facto gerontocracy….
His sci-fi videos are chewy but really interesting.
A story of Cya Red Doomsday, who does not get old, and one of her descendants, who hasn’t had time to grow up yet. Continue reading
Okay, I guess you shouldn’t let me listen to Imagine Dragons’ Thunder anymore.
This is 100% self-indulgent and I have no idea what timeline it fits in, or anything but that it’s well after the founding of Cloverleaf but before Cya decides it’s time for a new project.
There was a god at the gates of Cloverleaf — floating a little above the gates, to be accurate — and he was declaiming in a loud and booming voice that he was the god of thunder.
The Guard force did not laugh at him, mostly because they had been trained to be polite to visitors, but when the mayor of Cloverleaf arrived, she had no such training and no such manners.
She looked the would-be God up and down — somehow managing, although he was hovering above her position on the wall, to make it look like she was looking down on him. “Boy, you want to be a god of thunder? You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
She smiled. She had already put a lock on his powers while she walked up here, and she found it was fun to be able to posture a bit.
“Here in Cloverleaf,” she informed the would-be god, “we have the Lightning.”
It needed a proper power chord intro, because she was rock and roll and not anime. One of the far guards indulged her.
Guitar music screamed from nowhere. Someone handled the percussion.
And, as if on cue, Leo arrived.
🔨
I did a little more work on the strange little building I made. Continue reading
Okay, this started out when I was trying to write a story for Patreon (Legends and Myths, Fae Apoc) and sort of failed, but I had this idea about the Council (the ruling body of the “Good Guys” fae, the Shenera Enderaei, the Children of the Law), inherently having no authority to do what they do. And since I’ve played with the idea of Cloverleaf/Boom/Cya facing down the Council before…
This is set some long time after the founding of Cloverleaf, and is non-canon.
🌇
“We are here to see how well you are abiding by the regulations of the Council. Your position as a pro facto dictator here raises a red flag in our books, and we will be here until we have passed judgement or removed you from power.”
Cya looked at the people in front of her. She looked at the woman standing to her left. “This is a ‘Man on the Moon’ situation,” she told the woman.
The woman nodded and vanished. Cya smiled. The expression was small, polite, restrained. People who knew her the best — and only them — knew that it meant she was absolutely furious.
The space of three heartbeats passed. “I do not acknowledge your authority to judge me,” she told the people calmly. Continue reading
A bonus post, because I was entertaining myself.
🔨
The series of follies – small buildings, in other situations often in formal gardens, designed to be decorative while often resembling some purpose-built building – known most commonly as The Red-Tree Follies dot the landscape in a wavering set of ovals from east to west, providing lovely places for a picnic, for an evening’s rest, or for a small wedding. They have been mapped and drawn, painted and studied in recent years. Still, much about them remains a mystery.
What we do not know about the Red-tree follies far outweighs what we do know, so we will begin with the ascertainable facts. Continue reading
Okay, so I was playing around with a roleplay with Cal and Cynara decided to build herself a castle. Well, a play castle, this is ~8×8 with a tower; it’s a shed-sized castle. But once I’d been thinking about it, I decided I wanted to map it. Well, chart it.
Stained glass would be prettier than that, but Excel has its limits.
And yes, that says “Secret Exit #1,” because Cynara always puts in back doors. Even when you can jump off the roof into the moat if you have to.
The tower would probably be rounded, now that I think of it.
Anyway! Floor plans. And then I fixed the first floor – well, the throne.
And then I did the back
And then check out this:
https://tootplanet.space/@InspectorCaracal/908740
and especially this:
https://tootplanet.space/@InspectorCaracal/909088
Cal made the castle in Minecraft!!!
…Now I need to write some stories of characters in and around this little castle.
A bit later than:
Cya gets ready for a date and Almost Out the Door for a Date and Trying Again and Blind Dateand Catching Up and Getting to (re-)Know him
and Also Needs a Title
and More Cya Date and So, Tell me About your Day
See also: Red Thorns.
🍽️
For their fourth date, Manus brought her a town.
It was more of a settlement, really, a very small grouping of people who all looked at her with big, worried eyes and seemed to be very worried about their lot in life.
She’d known something was up when her normally-peaceful boyfriend was armed and suggested she do the same. “Should I bring a bodyguard?” she’d asked, mostly joking.
“no, that will spook them too much.,” his answer was a lot more serious. “You’ll be safe. you outpower all of them.”
“Them” was this settlement, twenty-three people in a burned-out town that probably hadn’t seen real inhabitance in decades. They looked up at her, and looked at Manus, and looked back at her.
“They want to fly the Cloverleaf flag,” he told her. “We caught them raiding, and stopped them pretty thoroughly, but they looked more hungry than fierce – sorry, guys – and, well..”
She walked up to one who had dropped his Mask and looked like a ragged, sad, coyote. She pulled aside his shirt and saw two red thorn marks. “Raiders?”
“Former Raiders,” Manus clarified. “They agreed to stop raiding, but one of their terms was that I try to get you to talk to them. Since I know you, well, I agreed to that.”
“So.” She looked them over. “You want to fly my flag.”
The coyote one cleared his throat. “It gives us a little bit of protection, ma’am, and considering where we’re from, we could use that protection.”
She looked at the next one over. No thorn-marks on his skin, but he had the old scars of a collar. He looked worried, and too thin, but they all looked too thin.
“And where exactly are you from?” She aimed the question at the one in front of her. She thought he might be human.
He shied away but forced himself to meet her eyes. “We belonged to the Shenera Oseraei. We didn’t want to belong to them anymore.”
“Halfbreeds,” muttered the woman on the other side of him, “and slaves. We ran away.”
“I hope you ran far, because I’m not in the mood for a war.”
The one on the end waved their hand weakly. “Teleporter, and Eo’sedek there can mask anything. So we should be safe. We came here, this far, because of Cloverleaf.”
“What do you think?” she asked Manus, although she could already guess, since he’d brought her here.
“I think they could do with some structure, and with some protection, and probably with some running water and a little help with food.”
“All right.” She studied them. “You fly my flag, you follow my laws. You want my support, you do what I tell you.”
One of the ones that were probably human stepped forward. “We want to be free, not just under another master.”
“And you will be. I won’t force obedience, but I will force lawfulness and I will give you homework.” She looked around the group. “In return, I’ll give you aid, help you rebuild this place into something comfortable, and you can fly my flag, with all the protections involved.”
“Homework?” asked the coyote suspiciously.
“Ah. Sometimes I forget I’m a teacher. Assignments to do or think about when I’m not here, as a – a human teacher might give a student.”
They shifted, looked at each other. “Like what?” asked the human one who wanted to be free.
“Well. First assignment, and I’ll be back in two days with food, water, and some other things: come up with one to four rules for your community that you can all agree on. Things to bind all of you. No bullying people into them; they have to be comfortable for everyone.”
“And we can fly the Cloverleaf?” The coyote’s ears were back. Poor thing was worried.
Poor thing had attacked her city at least twice.
“And you can fly the Cloverleaf. And those of you with thorns, I grant you the obvious exemption that you can enter your own town within the three years of your oath. Do we have a deal?”
They looked at each other. After a moment, the coyote nodded.
“We have a deal, sa’Doomsday.”
“Excellent. I’ll see you in two days.”
They wandered off slowly, Manus and Cya, to where Isra was waiting to teleport them home. “You looked like you were having fun?” he asked.
“That was a wonderful gift,” she assured him. “Thank you.”
“Do I get homework, too?” He grins insouciantly at her, and she found herself grinning back.
“Only if you want it, my dear, only if you want it.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1324129.html. You can comment here or there.
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anke is doing #faepril over on tumblr (see here) so I decided to write some fae descriptions. Here’s a unicorn mechanic.
Cya had, for once, not been looking for fae.
She had been looking for someone who could help her fix her car, actually, or the thing that, 50 years past the end of most manufacturing in the world, she was calling a car.
It wasn’t that easy, however, when you were three days out from anywhere, you were driving a cobbled-together vehicle that ran on sunlight, hope, and magic, and the last time you’d seen anyone had been half a day ago.
And it was raining.
The man came out of nowhere, or at least, he seemed to, and when he saw her Mask was down, showing off her Fae traits, he dropped his own glamour to show her that he, too, was fae.
The unicorn horn caught her attention immediately, the golden hair – not blonde, gold – that ran all the way down his back, the skin that was just as golden. He was tall, very tall for this long past the apocalypse, and bright like a statue.
When he saw she was squinting, he put up his Mask again, leaving him red-haired and brown-skinned, freckles dancing over his nose that was nearly as pointed as the horn she couldn’t see anymore.
“So. Car troubles?” It was only then that she noticed he was carrying a bag of tools. “I had this sense someone here might need some help.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1307557.html. You can comment here or there.