Tag Archive | iconflash

#ThrowbackThursday: an Icon-flash

May26

May 26, 2012: I was working through a flash fiction for every icon I had (unsurprisingly, I never finished).

This one was for this icon:

Shooting Star

Icon by [personal profile] later_tuesday

Yeah, the first one of the Asteroid-hits took us by surprise. I mean, shooting stars didn’t hit the earth that hard very frequently, and when they did – crater, some rock, that was it.

Nobody expected there to be sentient life, not in that first one. And, because the government did a quick and thorough job of covering it up (I know, I was there), the rest of the world wasn’t expecting the second one, either, or the third.

By the thirty-seventh of these Shooting Stars, everybody knew. Hobos who lived in shacks in the desert knew (and I’m not counting that guy who got superpowers because the asteroid almost landed on him).

continue reading The Shooting Star Problem here.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1111547.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Seeking Roommate, a ficlet of Stranded World

Sep23

Written to [personal profile] alexseanchai‘s prompt to my mini-prompt-call on Gender-Funkiness & also serving as an Iconflash for this icon!

“…and this is Add. She? He?” Bishop turned to the person standing next to him, seemingly oblivious to Summer’s embarrassed cringe. You couldn’t just… could you?

Add, who had black eyeliner, black hair, a black lace shirt, and black combat pants, looked thoughtful about the matter, hand on chin. “It’s a full moon, isn’t it?” Add glanced out the window at the sun. “Let’s go with they.”

“Right. They’re looking for a place to stay for the year, and, well, since we’re looking for another roommate or two…”

Summer studied Add. Add, in turn, studied Summer. They had perfect eyebrows, black lipstick, and a sardonic smile that said goth to Summer. “The pronouns aren’t going to be an issue, are they?”

Summer raised her own eyebrows right back. “Pronouns? Bishop hasn’t told you anything at all about us, has he? No. The pronouns aren’t going to be a problem.” She borrowed a smile from Basil, the “you poor dear” one. “We’re theater people, come on. We read Shakespeare.”

“Summm…” Bishop sighed. Summer cringed inwardly. She hadn’t meant to get her hackles up, but it was showing, wasn’t it? She peeked at Add.

Add was… grinning. Well, that was probably good. They really needed to fill that room. “I like her.”

Summer relaxed.

“I like her a lot.“

“Not too much, please,” Bishop teased.

Summer had to agree: “the bed’s full enough already.”

Summer & Bishop, along with their girlfriend Melinda, are characters in Stranded World. Their relationship started with this story. Basil is Summer’s theatre friend, who shows up quite frequently.

I am on a quest to write a flash to every one of the icons djinni has drawn for me.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/813828.html. You can comment here or there.

Icon Flash: Trees

Sep14

“It’s perfect.” Ce’rilla looked around the old hotel. “It has an atrium, it has rooms, and everything else can be fixed.”

“Mmm.” Her sister – “sister” the way her family did family ties, at least – regarded the place thoughtfully. “I thought you wanted trees.”

Ce’rilla regarded the building. Once upon a time, it had been a highway-off-ramp stop. But the world had ended when ‘Rilla and her sister were barely children. Now it was abandoned, and the highway was not exactly well-used. “I see trees over there.”

“‘Rill, the trees are like a mile away.”

“Mmm.” Ce’Rilla stretched, and then stretched. Talking to trees was easy. “But they’re going to come here.”


Ce’Rilla is a character in Addergoole (Second generation), as is her sister.

Addergoole has a landing page here

Written in a quest to write a flash to every one of the icons djinni has drawn for me.
a smiling girl with branch antlers

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/810844.html. You can comment here or there.

Icon Flash: Order

Sep12

“You’re totally OCD, you know.”

Winter’s new co-worker sprawled on the edge of Winter’s desk, poking at the pens Winter had lined up parallel to the edge of said desk. “I can see why you work in a law library.”

“I like order.” Winter moved the pens back into line and allowed himself to look the new co-worker in the scruffy face. “It helps with my work, yes.” He noticed the twitch above the man’s left eye, and the nick where he’d likely cut himself shaving. “And why are you working in a law library, Darrel?”

Useful setting information: The strands, in this ‘verse, connect everything, and are created by connections between people or between things.

Want more Stranded World? Check out the landing page here.

Written in a quest to write a flash to every one of the icons Djinni has drawn for me.
a man with a white ponytail, a suit, and a frown.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/810315.html. You can comment here or there.

Friday Flash/Djinni Icon Flash: Like This and Like That

Sep4

“This is the dance.” Senna took Autumn’s hands. “Your feet go like…” She hitched up her skirts to show her bare toes. “This and then this and then this.”

“Like, ah…” Autumn tried the steps. “This and then this, and then this and this?”

“Almost!” Senna grinned and showed off the steps again. “This and then this and so on.”

“This and then this…” Autumn found herself singing it. “Then this and so on. Senna, you’re a genius.”

“I’m a genius? It’s a dance.” The dance-mistress’ feet moved in a more complicated pattern this time, and her skirts swished against her knees.

“You’re a genius. It’s a song.” More than a song, it was a knot. “It’s a song to the universe.”

Autumn shifted her vision sideways, to the place where the strands of the world lay bright against the void. “‘Like this and like that and like this and uh…'” Her steps twined in the strands; Senna’s steps twisted in the lines, and together they made a beautiful macrame of connections. “Genius. This is the dance.”

Useful setting information: The strands, in this ‘verse, connect everything, and are created by connections between people or between things.

Want more Stranded World? Check out the landing page here.

Written for Friday Flash and in a quest to write a flash to every one of the icons Djinni has drawn for me.

“Like this and like that and like this and uh…” is from Dr. Dre’s Nuthin but a G thang.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/802433.html. You can comment here or there.

Icon Flash: The Shooting Star Problem

May26

Continuing 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.

Today’s icon:

Shooting Star

Icon by [personal profile] later_tuesday

Yeah, the first one of the Asteroid-hits took us by surprise. I mean, shooting stars didn’t hit the earth that hard very frequently, and when they did – crater, some rock, that was it.

Nobody expected there to be sentient life, not in that first one. And, because the government did a quick and thorough job of covering it up (I know, I was there), the rest of the world wasn’t expecting the second one, either, or the third.

By the thirty-seventh of these Shooting Stars, everybody knew. Hobos who lived in shacks in the desert knew (and I’m not counting that guy who got superpowers because the asteroid almost landed on him). People with no TV knew. Everyone knew about the Star People, the Asteroid Aliens, the Palondeze refugees.

I knew, of course. I’d been working with them since the beginning, since we first hid the skinny-furry-strange thing that, I swear, looked like an anthropomorphized anorexic platypus. I knew when they learned ASL (English was beyond their beak), and I knew when our linguists figured out their language.

I knew the first thing that one of them said to us, too:

We are here to help.

And what an older one, weaker and smaller, said in counter:

We are here for help.

By the time we’d worked out what they’d really meant, there had been fifty-three Shooting Stars in the course of a year and a half, and we started watching the sky, nervously, for the long blue contrails across the twilight.

Their definition of help, we were beginning to understand, was not quite the same as ours.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/347128.html. You can comment here or there.

The Study of Emerging Cultures

May22

Continuing 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.

Today’s icon:

My Anthropologist, from The Planners ‘Verse

Icon & Art by [personal profile] meeks

Before This story.


Late Autumn, 315 Post-Conflict

For the entirety of my decade as a scholar in the Tower, I studied Ancient Cultures. The Ancients division of the Library is one of the largest, and it is an intensive field of study.

However, the problem with Ancient Cultures is that, almost to a one, they are Ancient and thus gone, lost in the Conflict or long before that. One can read about them endlessly, theorize, study, hypothesize, but one can not actually visit these cultures. In many cases, one cannot even visit their ruins.

However, in the branching study of Emerging Cultures, one has quite a bit more room for exploration and study. The isolated nature of the population pockets after the Conflict means that, in the past three centuries, many different cultures have evolved.

Some, such as the Wild Tribes, are not currently open for embedded exploration, the way the Tower’s Scholars prefer to study. The Tower has attempted such. Every single attempt has ended poorly, indeed, fatally.

(I must admit I was still tempted. A one hundred percent chance of death is no deterrent to knowledge!)

Instead, I have acquired myself a position in one of the canal towns, a port from pre-Conflict made over into the shape of the new world. It is a benign and placid place, no more foreign than my mother’s farm.

But I have learned, to my eternal joy, that several grouped family units of the so-called Wild Tribes visit this town regularly to trade. I hear I will meet the Kybelii next week!

Finally, I shall begin to learn the truth of Emerging Cultures!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/345118.html. You can comment here or there.

Icon Flash: Summer

May20

Continuing 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.

Today’s icon:

Summer, from Stranded World.

Icon & Art by Djinni

“So what are you going to do about it?” Summer had stolen away from her boyfriend and girlfriend for a few minutes; she liked having them, liked them a lot, but she missed Basil. And, as it turned out, Basil had missed her, too.

“I don’t know.” He threw his shoe into his laundry hamper, the second one following soon afterward, and huffed out air. “I didn’t think this was going to be the hard part of dating.”

“Yeah. It always is.”

“You date assholes, Summer.”

“Hey!”

“Okay, current datees excepted. For now. Bishop seems like a nice guy, and your girl is pretty… for a girl.”

She barks out a laugh. “I thought you were sick of hearing about my love life.”

“I am. But I’m sick of talking about my … can’t call it a love life.”

“If you didn’t like him, it wouldn’t be this hard, hon.” She reached over and hugged Basil as tightly as she could, breathing in his smell. She missed that – and he gave really good hug, getting his whole body into it, making her feel warm and loved and safe.

She tried to give that back to him, now, and thought about painful deaths for Basil’s current problem. “I dunno, Baz. Maybe, just mayyybe, he’s just not getting it. It’s possible he’s not an asshole.”

“Did he date you?” If he was feeling well enough about it to tease, it might work out all right.

She grinned back at him. “Nah, I’m not his type. So? See, there’s hope for him. Ask him about it?”

“I will.” Basil tightened the hug for a minute. “You should come around more, Sum.”

“I know.” She patted his back apologetically, drawing a good-luck charm in the process. “I act as an asshole magnet, so you don’t have to deal with them.”

“Ex-actly.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/344268.html. You can comment here or there.

Icon Flash: Chain ‘Round her Neck

Dec10

Continuing 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.

Today’s icon:

Icon from [community profile] kink_bingo Names from Fourteen Minutes‘ random generator.

This is mild, for a story written by me with this icon, but it could be triggery.

The chain around her throat tightened, pulling her against the wall, telling Genique that her captor was coming in. She didn’t fight it anymore; after a month here, she knew it wouldn’t do any good, and the press of the links was starting to feel good to her. It told her she wasn’t alone.

The door to her cell creaked open on its track, and Basimontin walked in. He was carrying, as he always was, a tray with a cup of water and a bowl of gruel. He was, however, wearing a frown today. That made Genique frown, too. Basi always smiled.

“Thirty-one days, Miss Wadevier,” he said gently.

“Thirty-one,” she agreed with him. “I told you they wouldn’t be able to make the ransom.”

“One does not normally find people on luxury liners whose family cannot afford our quite-reasonable price.” The sky-pirate sounded almost apologetic.

“I wanted to see the worlds,” she explained, not for the first time. “I saved up until I could pay the fee. It took everything I had.” She hadn’t bargained with the sky-pirates.

“Everyone lies. No-one wants their family to have to foot the bill. But your family really didn’t.”

“I know.” She’d know they wouldn’t. It had lent a certain peace to her while she waited for the pirates to come to the same conclusion. “What happens now?”

“Since your family cannot or will not pay your ransom, you will simply have to earn your freedom yourself.” His frown deepened. “This won’t be easy, Miss Wadevier.”

She touched the chain around her throat. “It hasn’t been yet, Basi.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/195405.html. You can comment here or there.

Icon Flash – the Sea and Sky

Dec9

Continuing 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.

Today’s icon:

I don’t remember, I’m sorry, where I yoinked this from, 3 years ago, to serve as Kailani’s fisrt icon (“sea and sky.”) Today, I’m using it as a picture, not a Kai icon.

The sky and sea seemed to go on forever.

Their exploration ship had crash-landed on this planet, splash-landed, more like it, when a computer failure (meters and yards were not the same thing, and why had it taken this long for someone to notice the problem?) had sent it off course. Many of the crew and passengers had made it out alive, in the amphibious landing vessels that were designed for any human-habitable landing site, and now they floated along, staring out at the endless sea.

Rostislav had rigged a sail – the solar panels pulled in enough electricity to power the motor, but they had better uses for that power, and the sail made use of free wind. Once he’d gotten their vessel done, nothing would do but he did the other three, the captain’s first, of course. Not that Captain Heinz should still be in charge, but the expedition leader had been one of the ten percent not to survive the crash. Rostislav still missed Zana, and their children, too young to understand, still asked where she was.

Jafa had figured out a rudder – her family had spent summers on the cape – and, by that knowledge, been named leader of their boat. They could steer, but the question became what were they steering for? No land had been seen in two long weeks. They were running out of rations, and people were grumbling about decanting the work-animal embryos just to eat them. They were running out of patience, and there was nothing to do to fix that. The fourth boat, the one lagging behind, was discussing cannibalism.

And still the sea and sky went on forever, as far as their instruments could gauge.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/278156.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/194268.html. You can comment here or there.