Tag Archive | giraffecall: february2014

Tangles and Knots

Feb12

This is to kelkyag‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

It takes part in my Stranded World setting, after all extant Tattercoat stories.

Names from <a href="http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=superheronameorg
“>Seventh Sanctum.

There was something amiss with Winter’s sister.

With the oldest of Winter’s sisters and the most steady, the most easy-going, the least likely to have things go amiss.

Spring had warned him first, in that way that she did, a riddle tied up in a knot, the sonnets are slanting sideways and the seeds are falling all wrong. Then Summer, just something’s wrong with Autumn.

When their mother had called Winter, do something, he had known things had gotten out of hand. But because it was not he who had seen the problem first but Spring, he went out of character for himself and did things indirectly, looking not for the tangle but for its cause.

He had been young and cocky when he’d taught Spring; it hadn’t occurred to him until much later how much she had taught him.

There were tangles in Autumn’s skein, that much was clear. Knots, and, worse, fraying and snipped ends. But why? She’d always been so ready to flow with the world’s streams, so quick to twine with others and so very slow to actually tie any lasting connections.

Winter spied. He followed lines back from his sister without ever letting her see his presence, he murmured questions at the right people, he followed paperwork trails where they existed. He studied.

When he had a path to walk, he began walking. Literally, in this case: the cause of the snarls was only a few miles away, just a short trip from the Ren Faire where Autumn had set up shop.

Did she know? From the way her lines tangled, Winter doubted it. There was loss and pain in her mess, not immediate intimacy.

Winter made it to the house, or at least the dwelling – three trailers and an old recreational vehicle set up in a square around a loose courtyard, plenty for the mild spring weather – before something stopped him in his tracks.

His sisters and mother had said one word, and, while others had used other names, they had all led back to the same person. Tattercoat.

There were seven people in the compound, and a complex of tangled Strands and intentional knots that spoke of intentional weaving.

Untangling Knots

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/665445.html. You can comment here or there.

Blame Game, a story of Superheros (or possibly Science!) for the Giraffe Call

Feb12

This is to ellenmillion‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

It is either in my Science! verse or Superheroes, possibly both.

Names from <a href="http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=superheronameorg
“>Seventh Sanctum.

“Hurry up. The cops are going to be here soon.”

The three safebreakers were professionals, but they were the sort of professionals you hired fifty percent for their discretion. Austin – Dr. Lawrence – had gotten them in, Dr. Lawrence would get them back out, and in between they just needed to break the safe and not ask questions.

Hurry up counted as questions.

“I am going as quickly as is feasible. This isn’t a snatch-and-grab, you realize.” Dr. Lawrence was hanging upside-down from a very thin wire, using tweezers to move very tiny components. She was almost done. But the safebreakers were getting nervous.

“They’re going to know we were here. They’re really going to know we were here if they catch us.”

“They will know that someone was here. They will blame it, as they have done the last seven events, on either Cold Chase or Hurricane Deluder.”

The doctor ignored them, then; there were three more parts to move, and it was the most sensitive part of the operation. Not being complete dunces – the other fifty percent of their hiring requirement – the safecrackers waited until they had hauled Dr. Lawrence back to the hallway, and, being very smart, actually waited until they were all in the getaway van and several blocks away.

Then their leader turned to stare at the doctor. “Wait. ‘The last seven events.'”

Dr. Lawrence nodded. “Yes.”

“Including that one they blamed Cold Chase and, what’s his name, Monster Truck for?”

“Including that one, although that was a bit of a botch, sadly.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why Monster Truck got blamed. Look, I don’t know what you’re up to…”

“That was part of our agreement, yes.”

“But Hurricane Deluder is my cousin. So look, if you’ve got to peg stuff on the criminals…”

The doctor nodded slowly. “That is fair. Tell me, do you have any relation to Venom Pacer?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/665290.html. You can comment here or there.

Planning

Feb11

This is to [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

Regine and Luca are characters in Addergoole.

Warning: cold bitch

Year 43 of the Addergoole School; 26 years after the Apocalypse began

A month and a half – six weeks and three days – into the school year was a perfect time to review genetic data, and thus Regine sat in her office, studying her charts and lists.

By this point in the year, almost all of the new students had Changed and, via Dr. Caitrin’s extensive notes, Regine was placing the children in their genealogies.

“Fascinating. Wings again.” She made a note on the print-out, not so much old-fashioned anymore as back around again, and then another in her notebook. “And antlers, there, of course.” Of course. It would be interesting to see how dilute Aelfgar’s line had to be to avoid some sort of head decoration – if, of course, it ever got diluted with non-horned lines. There had been the one, but that was a special circumstance… And there, more wings.

This whole process would be far more convenient if she could simply tell the subjects who to breed with. Or, better yet, remove the subjects from it altogether except as egg and sperm donors. It was likely she could find plenty of willing surrogate mothers, and the creche would allow her standardized upbringing.

There were times when the Law was simply inconvenient to the progress of science.

There were, of course, things she could do. Manipulation was not something she excelled at, but she definitely had a grasp on bribery, and, in this day in age, anyone was susceptible to bribery. She made a few notes; not everyone was paired off yet. There were a few pairings that would be beneficial this year. If she couldn’t make them happen, perhaps Luca or Michael could.

Her door slammed open; if Regine believed in coincidence, it would have been an interesting one that Luca Hunting-Hawk was standing there.

Continued

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/664900.html. You can comment here or there.

Bad Dialogue and Other Problems, a story of Superheroes for the Giraffe Call

Feb11

This is to [personal profile] skjam‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

My Superheroes verse has a landing page here.

Raven Sapphire was protecting the Stony Coast again. It was what the blue-black superhero did, from a fortress in the mountains that nobody had ever found.

And the Silk Beast, Rip-damn the Unspeakable, was terrorizing small children at the beach. He had one in each huge primary arm and was using his secondary arms to fold a third into a belly compartment. “Stay there until you’re digested, ha, ha, h-“

Now, why would I say that?

“Halt, evil-doer!”

“Never! Not while I have plans left to plot!” He stood, hands on hips and one child still under each arm.

What a silly thing to say. What a silly thing to do. It’s not as if she doesn’t have that… The Silk Beast launched himself into the air before he’d finished the thought. …blast ray that always fries my suit.

Right on cue, Raven Sapphire’s blast ray shot out. But the Silk Beast wasn’t where he was supposed to be, and the ray caught him on his ankle.

Plates fell off and something stung, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from fleeing. “You’ll never catch-” No, that was stupid. He shut his mouth and diverted the speaker power to the blasters.

“Come back here and fight me like a man!” The superhero looked silly, Silk Beast mused. Of course, he probably looked pretty ridiculous, too, with three children squirming around.

What was he going to do with them? He’d been picking up children… been picking up children for…

“Your ankle’s fizzing, Mister.”

“Thanks, kid.” When he didn’t put any power into declaiming, the jets worked a lot faster. He was already halfway to his mountain hideout. And then he would… “Why was I grabbing you, again?”

“Something about soup?”

“Well, that’s silly. I don’t even eat.” He landed on a relatively smooth piece of ground and set the children down. He used his secondary arms to let the third one out of the belly-chamber of his suit while he leaned his chin on a main arm.

Rip-damn the Unspeakable had a lot to think about.

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/664640.html. You can comment here or there.

Through Biology, two drabbles

Feb11

These are to [personal profile] thnidu‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

Addergoole/Fae Apoc Post-apocalypse (probably), and Science!

Addergoole has a landing page here; Faerie Apocalypse has a landing page here;

Science! has a landing page here.

“It’s not like it’s hard.” The man in the big armchair shrugged. He was, of course, smirking. “The difficult part isn’t spreading the seed, it’s waiting until it’s sprouted and cultivating it properly.”

The woman – standing, though she’d been offered a chair – was not smiling. She was, indeed, contriving to give the impression that she’d never smiled. “You speak of this like it’s agriculture.”

“Well, in a sense, isn’t it? I am farming myself a nation of followers, an army of those who will be loyal to me and mine. It’s slow, but I will rule the world.”

“They’re seeds.” Cara didn’t so much look unimpressed as give off a complete air of dis-impression. “Tiny seeds.”

Seeds were bad. Seeds could lead to a situation like Jay. Better to cut this off in the bud, as it were.

Gabrielle, Dr. Deloach, was not going to be cut. “They’re the start of something new. It’s a mood-changing plant-”

“Like tobacco?”

“Oh, no, nothing that mild. This is an edible, a carrot hybrid. It makes people susceptible to suggestion, especially in certain sequences.” Dr. Deloach smiled. “Conveniently, my father owns a broadcast station & my mother’s a caterer.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/664493.html. You can comment here or there.

Stranded in Winter, a story of Stranded World (ha) for the Giraffe Call

Feb10

This is to [personal profile] moonwolf‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call, with a side order of [personal profile] librarygeek‘s prompt here

Warning: cliffhanger.

Autumn (and Winter, et al) are from Stranded World.

Winter – the season, not her brother – left Autumn stuck in one place, this year not just in a single town, the way she often spent the colder times, but stuck in the town’s tiny inn, the snow actually pressing the doors shut.

She’d spent the first day sitting in the tavern down stairs, drawing, playing online when the spotty wi-fi was working, and working on her very messy accounting. The second day she’d spent half hiding in her room, and the other half helping the also-stuck cook-and-owner clean the kitchen top to bottom. The third day, when it was clear that the snow really wasn’t going to let up, they’d both crawled out a second-story window, jumped off the porch, and started shoveling their way down to the ground.

When they’d gotten the door clear and most of the inn’s sidewalk, and after they’d taken a break for cider and cheese, they dug across the street to the Library. The Librarian, eighty years old if she was a day, had been subsisting on biscuits and tea. She was so grateful for the rescue that she let Autumn check out whatever she wanted, on the theory that it wasn’t going to go anywhere anyway.

The inn-cook, no older than Autumn, had said, over and over again, that this was the worst winter he could remember. When the Librarian said it, too, it pricked Autumn’s curiosity.

She read ancient newspapers while munching on onions rings and chicken wings, helped the inn-cook shovel to the grocery and then to the grocer’s house, read until she fell asleep, and read over breakfast. When she and the inn-cook had re-cleared paths that had gotten a foot of snow overnight, she headed up to the highest place she could reach – the Library’s cupola – and started looking. Looking.

She drew the patterns she wanted on her arms: the weather, which was generally mild, with inches, not feet, falling at once. The people, who were generally stoic and tended not to leave town much (except Autumn, and others like her, who came and went with the seasons). The anomaly, snow past her hips and still falling.

And when she was done, her arms and chest bare to the frigid air and covered in snowflake patterns, she opened her sight to the Strands.

And fell down, nearly blinded. “Oh.“

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/663858.html. You can comment here or there.

Stranded in Winter

Feb10

This is to [personal profile] moonwolf‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call, with a side order of [personal profile] librarygeek‘s prompt here

Warning: cliffhanger.

Autumn (and Winter, et al) are from Stranded World.

Winter – the season, not her brother – left Autumn stuck in one place, this year not just in a single town, the way she often spent the colder times, but stuck in the town’s tiny inn, the snow actually pressing the doors shut.

She’d spent the first day sitting in the tavern down stairs, drawing, playing online when the spotty wi-fi was working, and working on her very messy accounting. The second day she’d spent half hiding in her room, and the other half helping the also-stuck cook-and-owner clean the kitchen top to bottom. The third day, when it was clear that the snow really wasn’t going to let up, they’d both crawled out a second-story window, jumped off the porch, and started shoveling their way down to the ground.

When they’d gotten the door clear and most of the inn’s sidewalk, and after they’d taken a break for cider and cheese, they dug across the street to the Library. The Librarian, eighty years old if she was a day, had been subsisting on biscuits and tea. She was so grateful for the rescue that she let Autumn check out whatever she wanted, on the theory that it wasn’t going to go anywhere anyway.

The inn-cook, no older than Autumn, had said, over and over again, that this was the worst winter he could remember. When the Librarian said it, too, it pricked Autumn’s curiosity.

She read ancient newspapers while munching on onions rings and chicken wings, helped the inn-cook shovel to the grocery and then to the grocer’s house, read until she fell asleep, and read over breakfast. When she and the inn-cook had re-cleared paths that had gotten a foot of snow overnight, she headed up to the highest place she could reach – the Library’s cupola – and started looking. Looking.

She drew the patterns she wanted on her arms: the weather, which was generally mild, with inches, not feet, falling at once. The people, who were generally stoic and tended not to leave town much (except Autumn, and others like her, who came and went with the seasons). The anomaly, snow past her hips and still falling.

And when she was done, her arms and chest bare to the frigid air and covered in snowflake patterns, she opened her sight to the Strands.

And fell down, nearly blinded. “Oh.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/663858.html. You can comment here or there.

Bully for You

Feb10

This is to [personal profile] imaginaryfiend‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

Addergoole, Year 15

Addergoole has a landing page here.

“I don’t need another school. I’m going to the community college with everyone else.”

Thus had started an argument with Lor’s parents that had lasted the entire school year, past graduation, over the summer, and right up until the moment the short guy with the amazingly strong grip had picked Lor up and dragged him away from his friend Joe’s parents’ house and to the underground bunker that was supposed to be a “finishing” school. Like Lor needed finishing. He was plenty done already.

Then he’d actually gotten to the school, and Lor had changed his mind. The classes were hard, sure, but Lor had never minded a little challenge. And his classmates were no challenge it all.

It took him four days to get little Andreas – technically a year above Lor, but shorter and younger than him; everyone here was shorter and younger than Lor, it was awesome – to get Andreas doing his math and science homework, and two more days to get cute Candy doing his English homework and a few things on the side. Somewhere in there, people showed off some tentacles and horns, but Lor shrugged it off. Apply a little pressure and, elf or fairy or human, everyone bent.

Up until this point, he’d mostly been picking on “upperclassmen,” just for the humor value. There was Pano, of course, who he’d managed to get to do his homework, but that was it. It took him halfway through the second week of school to get another kid in his year, skinny guy named Kelsey, to start hauling his lunch for him. It was a pretty sweet deal, and he was beginning to thing his dad was right, and a finishing school was totally the way to do.

And everything was sweet until a skinny girl showed up at his lunch table with her hands on her hips. “That,” she declared, “is my brother.“

“And? S’my bitch now.”

“And I’m not okay with that.”

“Cytherea, Cy, it’s okay.” Kelsey squirmed in his chair; Lor’s smile just got bigger.

“Listen to your brother, Cy.”

“No. Lor, I challenge you.”

Next: Dance the Dance

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/663159.html. You can comment here or there.

Do-Gooders

Feb10

This is to [personal profile] inventrix‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

Addergoole/Fae Apoc Post-apocalypse.

Addergoole has a landing page here; Faerie Apocalypse has a landing page here;

Jaenelle knew there was going to be trouble the minute the little group drove into their town.

Drove, for one. It was 2019; things had started blowing up in 2011. There were plenty of cars, sure, but who could find gas? And people who could find gas either drove something tiny and fuel-efficient, or a truck for hauling things around. Not a bus.

And, of course, they were teens or twenty-somethings. Nobody adult rode around like that, fresh-faced and smiling and with a bus full of children and, what, miracle supplies? Perfectly clean things that they’d gotten from somewhere?

The girl had bounced out of the van and waved at the gate like there weren’t monsters everywhere and they weren’t making a scene. “I’m Berry; we’re here to help.”

Help. Like they needed help. Jaenelle talked to Farah and they talked to Bob and Angus and they talked to Constance and Miranda and their husbands John and Jon, and they talked to Keith, who was serving as mayor because they felt like, even if there were only thirty of them left, they needed some pretense at government.

But by that point, Jody and her feel-good husband Frank had let in the van full of children (with their children), and blankets and booze had done what blankets and booze did throughout history. The kids, Berry and Hawthorn and Zahavi they called themselves, as if their names weren’t probably Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mote, and Mustardseed, were into everything. They took over the farming, first, and then the doctor’s station, as if some teenager knew better than Bob and Farah who had been emergency room doctors before the Fall. They took over the school, like they knew more than Constance, and even the general store.

“I told you,” Jaenelle told Keith, when he was suddenly no longer mayor. “And what happens when they leave?” Half their thirty-adult town was deferring to these children for everything, and the other half was close behind.

Keith looked far too thoughtful. “What if they never leave?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/662975.html. You can comment here or there.

Hard Choices

Feb10

Written to [personal profile] kay_brooke‘s prompt to my Giraffe Call here.

Names from Fourteen Minutes and Seventh Sanctum

Content warning: Creepy. Implied slow murder.

“I want you to know, I think this is disgusting.”

The tall woman liked to talk. It was generally an unfortunate habit in bad guys, at least in movies, but this was, sadly, not a movie. This was Londi’s life or, from the looks of things, the end thereof.

“I think it’s pretty disgusting, too.” Londi struggled – uselessly, of course – against the buckles and straps holding her to the table. “So why do you, you know, not do it?”

The tall woman – Eldalene, she’d said her name was Eldalene, although, if she was who Londi thought she was, the papers had been calling her Fang the Frigid – shook her head. “They need to understand. They’re not going to understand without a sacrifice. And if I don’t do it with you, I’m just going to have to do it with someone else.”

“Someone else is okay.” Londi shook her head, or at least tried to. There was even a strap holding down her forehead. “No, no, I don’t really mean that. Not someone else. God. If you have to do this to someone…”

“Very noble.” Eldalene sighed. “So very sweet and so very noble. If there were more people like you out there, this wouldn’t be a problem. They would just see the issue and understand it.”

“What… Oh, you drugged me, didn’t you?” Her tongue was getting heavy. “What do you want them to see?”

“That life is about hard choices. Of course I drugged you. There’s no reason for you to suffer.“

“You’re talking about dissecting me. I think I’m going to suffer in the long run.”

“Hard choices.” There was a dull feeling in Londi’s gut, and she could no longer see the tall woman. “That’s what this is about. The rest of the world is going to see what happens when they ‘refuse to negotiate.’ Again. But you’re prettier than he was.”

“He?” Londi struggled to hold on to consciousness, but Eldalene’s answer was lost in a slow buzzing in her ears.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/662560.html. You can comment here or there.