Tag Archive | giraffecall: 010214

Friends Do, a story of Dragons Next Door for OrigFic Bingo

To kelkyag‘s prompt to my January card for origfic_bingo.

This fills the “friendship” square.

Jin leaned against the bleachers in gym class, and listened to his human friends fail to understand.

“You introduced her to your folks, right? You did the whole prom thing, you’ve gone on dates… you’ve got all the hard stuff out of the way.” Toby had been with his girlfriend, Vanessa, for over a year; he at least thought he knew what he was talking about.

“Until Valentine’s Day.” Geordi had gone through seven girlfriends in six months. “Or her birthday. Or, god forbid, Christmas. But it’s April. You’re golden, unless her birthday’s in May.”

“Seriously.” Toby caught a ball tossed their way – they were supposed to be playing dodge-ball – and shook his head at Jin. “Unless this is oogy boogy stuff?”

“Oogy boogy!” Geordi wriggled his fingers in what he clearly thought was a classic “magic happens” gesture.

“Yes.” Jin sighed. “It’s oogy boogy stuff.”

“Is she…” Toby mimicked Geordi’s gesture.

“Well, yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t have brought her home so soon otherwise.”

“Racist parents, hunh? I know how that can be.” Toby shrugged. “So she’s a… damnit.” It was as if, having played the ‘racism’ card, he felt like he had to be correct himself. “She’s a dweomer, then? So it’s not like you have to keep the magic stuff hidden from her. Can you do that, in your house? I mean, we’ve been there, man…”

“Exactly. You’ve been there. Which means, you know who my neighbors are.”

“What, the pixies?”

“No, they’re not quite neighbors…“ Jin shrugged. “Besides, she’s already met them.”

His friends – even his human friends – weren’t stupid. “Woah. You mean the dragons. You haven’t introduced her to Jimmy yet?”

“No.” He hunched his shoulders forward. “I haven’t. When a dragon doesn’t like someone…”

“He’s your best friend, man. I mean… we’re your friends. He’s your literal wingman.” Geordi patted Jin’s back. “She makes you happy, right?”

“Yeah?” Yeah. More than anything.

“Then Jimmy will be fine. But you gotta tell him.”

Jin swallowed. It wasn’t nearly that simple, but… “Right. Right, okay. If you see charred remains…”

“We’ll make sure all the girls cry at your funeral, yep. But it won’t be like that.” Toby punched his arm. “Go. Talk to him. That’s what friends do.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/645248.html. You can comment here or there.

Supply Exhausted

Jan18

This is to thnidu‘s prompt to my dailyprompt here.

This fills the “exhaustion” square in the January Bingo Card.

Names from Fourteen Minutes‘ random name generator.

Warning: this might be a bit creepy.

“How can we be running out?” Shadde-Reston had that high-management refusal to accept numbers that Basia knew far too well; one had to work around it with charts and graphics and, if possible, displays that invoked all the senses.

“Let me show you, Se.” When one is the bearer of bad news, be as deferential as possible. One didn’t want to end up being the next bad news.

“I don’t want more charts. Do you understand what this means, Basia? If we run out?”

“Se, I know that we are running out. I know that this will have huge effects on the economy. I know that it will cut the luxuries market by over a half. I know that it will cut the food market by more than that. People will starve.”

“It’s the end of an era!” Shadde’s voice was trilling upwards. Basia responded by keeping a completely level tone of voice.

“It is certainly going to require some changes. The most efficient plan would be to pare luxuries down to the very minimum, curtail euphoric production, and, of course, cut back on imports until we can restructure our economy.”

“I still don’t understand how this could have happened.”

“If you’d let me show you the demonstration, Se?”

“Your demonstrations are always so dreary, Basia.”

“That is my job, Se Shadde-Reston.” When one wasn’t being listened to, sometimes one had to resort to high formality. “This one’s job has always been to distill the facts for the Supervisors. And this one must do one’s job.”

“No displays. No demonstrations. No charts. Just tell me how we could run out? How do you run out of workers? They’re a renewable resource. Leave them alone and they make more of themselves.”

Basia coughed. “That would be the problem, Se. They, ah, stopped making more.”

“What did they do?” Shadde leaned forward over the 100-years-extinct-hardwood desk. “What did they do?”

Basia was going to have to spell it out. “Se Shadde, they stopped breeding. They stopped having sex.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/639467.html. You can comment here or there.

Omens and Ill, a story for the Bonus Round

Jan17

To lilfluff‘s prompt for here, my dailyprompt prompt “getting your feet wet.” Also fills “Holy Place” on my January Bingo Card.

New setting? Might be in the same world as the oracle whose god got irritated. (here)

This REALLY feels like a draft of a novel beginning to me.

There were a few blind nay-sayers who took it as an ill omen when the temple of Orestin flooded.

Since most of the rest of the city and the surrounding land were also flooded, the majority of citizens were far less concerned. Their temple held a decent piece of land on a well-known street; the place was well-lit of the night time (when the city was less flooded) and well-trafficked during the day. But it was not on the city’s one hilltop

A few scholars and that sort suggested that it could be a sign that the temples themselves were places of worship, not the homes of the gods. Thus had been suggested since time immemorial, but there was still no agreement on the matter.

The acolytes of Orestin had no time for that debate. They were wading through ankle-deep water to prepare for the morning devotions; they were cleaning out unused space (from a time of greater prosperity; the acolytes of Orestin saved everything, including real estate) for those whose homes were unlivable, they were baking flatbread and pressing cheese, running the ovens full of whatever they could roast just to combat the damp.

An Acolyte of the Mulberry Ring, Tremmin, was currently knee-deep in water at the base of the temple stairs, herding the faithful (or those willing to pretend, at the moment, for a dry place to perch) up the stairs and through one of the three entrances. A citizen caught her eye and smirked, looking as exhausted as she felt. “You’d think it was a Quarterly Festival, wouldn’t you? You’ve even got the back door open.”

She wanted to say something clever, but Tremmin had been awake for, to her count, three days and four bells, although it could have been four days and three bells. The speaker rescued her with a tired smirk and an irreverent thump of the marble. “Orestin, I suspect, does not mind. Nor his is holy place less holy for the work you are doing today. Blessings, Acolyte, and may you find the place you are most proper in.”

“Blessings, Citizen.” The words came out of her mouth without bidding. “May your proper place be waiting for you.”

“I have already found it.” He breezed past, leaving Tremmin, still knee-deep in water, with the uncomfortable feeling that she’d just missed something very important.

She had no time for ill omens, however, so she turned to the next citizen. “Welcome, and may Orestin comfort you in this time of trial.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/638673.html. You can comment here or there.

Protected: Sleep When You’ve Lost, a story for the Giraffe/Bingo

Jan16

Holy Places: Bingo Card Fill

Jan13

Story: In the Holy
Prompt: Holy Place
Setting: Misc/Space (here)
524 Words:

From the notebook of Serja, called The Exile Church.

I was sent away for saying things that were not supposed to be true.

Those things I said, not because I wished to be sent away (I did not! I had a good life, as such things go, and good friends, as much as they could be, and a pleasant place to reside), not because I wished to make trouble (I also did not! People who make trouble were sent away, or worse), but because the truths sang from my mouth like the resonation of the universe, and it hurt to hear them called lies…

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/636315.html. You can comment here or there.

Bingo! Column One

Jan13

This is a fill for my January 2nd card:

B1: A Favorite Place
Prompt: A Favorite Place
Verse: Stranded Universe
Summer knows her sister Autumn has a favorite place.

B2: Team D
Prompt: A Cunning Plan
Verse: Dragons Next Door
Whose brilliant idea was it to kidnap her?

B3: Time of Testing
Prompt: Test/Exam
Verse: n/a
“This is how we’ve tested since the dawn of time.”

B4: Unwelcome Guests
Prompt: Unwelcome Guest
Verse: Addergoole/Baram’s House Elves
In the middle of an apoc, most guests are unwelcome

B5: Victimization
Prompt: Victim
Verse: Dragons Next Door
Follows after Cunning Plan, above.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/636036.html. You can comment here or there.

Unforgivable, a story for the OrigFic Bingo

Jan11

To ysabetwordsmith‘s prompt to my January OrigFic Card.

This fills the “Betrayal” square.

Content warning: suggested self-harm, vague.

“You weren’t supposed to know at all.”

“I’m glad I did! Tory, this isn’t the sort of thing you should keep to yourself. You’ll be better now.”

“Ty, you can’t just read people’s private things. That was password-protected for a reason.”

“Well, it wasn’t like it was hard…” Ty was faltering. The staff had said five minutes. Maybe five minutes was too long.

“You hacked my computer. You read my private things.” Tory was looking around the room. The window, no, no there was no way anyone could get out the window. Ty backed towards the door. There’d be no end of it if Tory got out.

“Tory, look at it! Look at you! I did this for your own good! Come on, you have to understand that.”

Sitting in a hospital bed, in a thin gown, Tory didn’t look understanding. If anything, Ty would have to call that expression “furious.” “Come on, Tory. You understand. I did this for your own good.”

“You violated me.”

“I read your computer.”

“And I ended up here.” Tory stood up. “No. I don’t understand, Ty. No, it’s not okay.”

The window was too small for anyone to fit out of. Wasn’t it?

“Tory… Tory, I was helping you.”

“That wasn’t the help I wanted. You can go off and help someone else. Or better yet… don’t help anyone at all.”

The window wasn’t too small for Tory.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/634335.html. You can comment here or there.

Then and Now – a story of that Damned Cat and his kitten for the OrigFic Bingo

Jan11

This is to anke‘s prompt (on twitter) to my December OrigFic Bingo Card. This fills (for the second time) the “Then and Now” square.

That Damned Cat (Radar) and his Kitten have their own tag here – Kitten Tag. They are part of the Aunt Family setting, which has a landing page here.

Radar had been a kitten once.

It was a distant memory, a fuzzy memory he didn’t often examine.

He had not been, as this kitten was now, a sentient kitten. He had not been a sentient anything back then.

He sat grooming the kit, holding her down with one paw while he cleaned her behind the ear. You know what it was like, Beryl had said. You can help her. Under that assumption, she’d convinced the mother cat to let Radar close to his daughter. Joint custody, she’d joked.

She must have gotten the idea from her friends at school. Her Family did not do divorce, and when they did, the family kept the children, no questions asked.

“Da-a-a-a-aad.” His Kitten mewled in complaint at him. Beryl had taken to calling the kitten Lam, for no reason that she would explain. There had been worse names. He had had worse names. “You’re thinking again.”

“This is a thing that happens with us, child. You will learn that in time.”

She rolled onto her back. “You were thinking about being a kitten.”

There was no use in denying it. “Who made you, kit?”

“I was born like this. I don’t remember any time I wasn’t like this.” She nuzzles against his chest. “Do you?”

“Then…” Radar chirruped and circled his daughter until he found a comfortable spot. “Then I was a cat. A kitten, a little pile of fluff, like your siblings. Now, now I am…”

“A Damned Cat. I’ve read the book.”

“That book was destroyed fifty years ago.”

The damn kitten purred. “That was then, Dad. This is now.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/634037.html. You can comment here or there.

Romance was never this convenient to handle

Jan8

To Kelkyag’s prompt for here, my dailyprompt prompt “a clone,” and here, my OrigFic Bingo card, “Hallucinations/visions.”

Paige waved at Mark Faine, although he didn’t see her, or at least didn’t respond – he never did, but being Mark Faine, he already had a girlfriend and hadn’t, as far as Paige could tell, been single for more than a day of their high school career. Which was a pity, ’cause Paige had more than made up for it by being single for their entire high school career, except that one day with Eilan Saffron, and boy had that been a mistake. It would be nice if there were two or three or maybe four Mark Faines. Maybe then she’d have a chance.

She should really get to lunch. She got a little Snickers-commercial when she didn’t eat on time, and this stupid Senior-year schedule had her lunch nearly right before she got on the bus. She headed away from where Mark Faine was totes ignoring her, around the corner, stepped away from the punks and sidled sideways around the jocks – no need to upset anyone, everyone had been on edge since the principal quit like that, all of a sudden. The new rules weren’t helping things either, and the punks all looked sad and funny without their metal.

She rounded another corner – Marmal High was full of corners, and somehow it seemed like there were more around lunch time – and ran into Mark Faine.

She was feeling fainter than she ought to be. This was just one of the demetaled punks, it had to be, Sid and Nancy T-shirt and an extra hole in the nose. She stepped away. “Sorry, didn’t mean to…”

“Hey, no worries.” The voice was Mark Faine’s. Paige knew that voice like she knew the latest Enhydra Lutris CD.

“Hey.” That was Mark Faine’s voice again, coming from the other side of her. She was hearing things. She was seeing things. Paige leaned against the wall and tried not to act totally disjoined from reality.

Standing in front of her, however, were three Mark Faines. She had to be losing it.

“Hey, you’re kinda cute.”

Nope, she was totes gone; she’d already lost all there was to lose.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/632920.html. You can comment here or there.

Victimization, a story of Dragons Next Door for the Giraffe Bingo Call

Jan8

To kelkyag‘s prompt to my orig-fic card. This fills the “Cunning Plan” slot.

Juniper, Kelkathian, and Azdekious are part of my Dragons Next Door setting; its landing page is here.

This story is directly after Team D.

“What’s the big deal? She’s a rich kid.”

Kelkathian stood on kel’s toes and shot Azdekious a glance. The driver still wasn’t getting it. This could be a problem. They had an unconscious kid they’d contracted to protect, an immensely important unconscious kid, a panicking backup guy, and a dumb driver.

The situation could be a lot worse, of course; any of them in the front could know what they were doing.

“The big deal.” The backup guy coughed. “The big deal? The big deal?”

“Stop saying that!”

“The big deal is that this is a kid from Smokey Knoll!”

“It’s a human kid from Smokey Knoll. Only rich humans live up on that hill.”

Kelkathian counted silently. One, two, three.

Four, five, six, seven. Wow, the passenger really was angry – or stunned. Possibly both.

“There are no humans living on Smokey Knoll.”

And now there was another silent count. Looking at Azdekious, he was doing the same thing. One, two, three…

“Say that again?” The driver’s voice had changed.

“There are no humans living on Smokey Knoll.” So had the passenger’s voice. They were both using very careful, measured tones.

And now, now it was time to make sure the driver understood. Kelkathian reached out with kel’s othersense, grabbed the electricity, and shorted out several fuses. The car went dead.

“There aren’t… but… the heck?” The driver turned the key a few times. Nothing happened, of course… and then the glue holding the cloth to the roof failed over the driver’s side.

The seat brackets failed. Something in the radio began to pop and hiss. A spring in the seat popped out and jabbed the driver in the posterior. Kelkathian had to stifle a giggle.

The passenger got out of the van. Fleeing? No, the back door opened.

The passenger, a slim man in his late twenties, was holding both of his hands in the air. “I am going to take the girl out of the van. I am going to carry her to this bus stop. I am going to call her parents and wait there, protecting her, until someone arrives to pick her up who can prove parentage.”

“The heck are you doing?” The driver was trying to extricate himself from his seat, but not having much luck.

The man appeared to be looking at Junie, who was still laying motionless. “I do not wish to be the victim of this child’s allies’ rage. I am going to do everything I can to get her back to her parents before I am.”

Kelkathian studied the man. She didn’t generally have much use for humans, but this one was showing promise.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/632365.html. You can comment here or there.

Alder's Grove Fiction

The Worlds of Lyn Thorne-Alder