Tag Archive | morepls: fulfillment

Itty Bitty Package, a story for the Giraffe Call

Jun4

I asked for prompts regarding Packages here for The MicroPrompt Giraffe Call. This is written to Kunama_Wolf’s Prompt here.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”

Pretza had carried easier things. She had, for one, carried the entire team’s gear up the side of a mountain. She had carried an injured teammate down the side of a mountain. She had once carried a carriage, albeit only for five feet.

She had carried a Edenian tiger “cub” back to its mother – without getting mauled. She had carried Westerosi killer flesh-eating viruses across a lava field. Once, she had carried a bomb through enemy lines, on Narnia, near the Terebinthian front.

All of these things had been easier than this. She was a trained courier; courrying things was what she did. “Easy, easy. You are bouncy, I thought that was just a thing people said.” She adjusted the three layers of Kevlar and wished that the job had been, just this once, not somewhere tropical.

Or that it had come with a bulletproof car. She had never, ever, wanted so badly for her package to not get jostled, and she had carried things that could destroy a planet – if not a solar system – if they were jostled. “Shh, shh. Oh, please, shh. We’re not in safe territory yet.”

She had, once, led three schoolchildren to safety through a mountain range that had no name except Death in any language. That had been nerve-wracking. This, this was harder. “Come on, little one, how about a finger for now? Here, I know it’s not green, but it’ll have to do.”

The Thalassan royalty had paid Pretza very well. They would pay her three times as well if she got her little package across the border and into the Orion Free Territory – well enough that she could, if she chose to, easily retire. If she failed… and Pretza had never failed… they would not need to punish her, because she would already be dead.

“There you go. There you go. Shh, now, that’s a girl. Just a few more miles.”

Next: Courier Duty

Tip Package 😉

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/725609.html. You can comment here or there.

Fairy Ring Shortcuts… a story of Fae post-apoc for the Giraffe Call

May26

I asked for prompts regarding mushrooms here for The MicroPrompt Giraffe Call. This is written to Clare’s Prompt here and is set in the post-apoc of my Fae Apoc ‘verse.

It goes with Fairy Rings

Nacelle hated using the fairy rings.

Bronn had created them, but Bronn was a badger Change – had been a badger Change, she supposed – and it pleased him endlessly to pop up from the dirt as if he had actually taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

Nacelle was not a badger Change; she was a fairy Change, if such a thing wasn’t totally redundant, and popping up through the ground got dirt in crevices she hadn’t even known she had.

But the fairy ring network was the absolute best for travel – and the absolute hands-down premier way to get truffles and other very, very tasty mushrooms. Bronn must have had some pig in his background, because every one of his mushroom rings led straight to some of the best mushroom soil in the world.

And they really were all over the world, although generally at least three hundred miles apart in any given direction, often more. Nacelle hated them… but she used them, because in her line of work, it didn’t really do to be stuck in one place, and stuck-in-one-place was what most people were, this far after the End War.

She made a face as she shook her way out of the ground. She really needed some wild strawberries, and they were in season here sooner than anywhere else on the planet.

She opened her eyes, once she was sure the dirt was out of them.

A human child was staring at her, its mouth open and its hands flailing wildly.

Tip ‘Shroom 😉

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/721424.html. You can comment here or there.

The Destruction of the Gods, a story-bit of the FaeApoc

May15

This is a continuation of a piece chosen by random-date-choice.

It follows Mourning Lost Gods.

February, 2012

We thought the fights had died down.

There were twelve of us, now, refugees every one of us from a world that simply did not exist anymore. We had found a building near the river that still had walls, still had a roof, still had doors that shut and locked, and we had turned it into what we could of a home.

There hadn’t been any GodFights in weeks, not since the last major brawl, but it was February in the Mid-West; maybe even those that would call themselves gods didn’t want to be out in the cold.

From what we could gather – from the radio, from the one tv station that still came through, from the refugees that came and stayed, or came and left – it was the same everywhere. The fights had died down.

They said someone had nuked a god; someone else said they had nuked the doorways. We didn’t care, not as much as we should have. I know I, at least, felt like all my caring had been seared off like burned nerve endings, somewhere in the collapse of everything I’d ever known.

We were like trauma victims, like refugees, like unwilling colonists starting over in the ruins of a civilization. If we thought about the gods at all, we thought to be glad that they had stopped, be glad that, maybe, this building might stand, be glad that we could breathe, and be warm, and move on.

We had found a way to make a proper chimney, and we had pulled together a wood-burning stove. We had found food – you don’t want to know some of what we ate, but there was enough that what we were eating wasn’t each other – and we were beginning to find community.

And then a half-dead god limped into our little haven, muttering words of magic and bleeding on our doorstep.

next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/768781.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/714468.html. You can comment here or there.

Untangling Knots, a continuation of Stranded World for @Anke

Mar27

This is a continuation of Tangles and Knots commissioned by [personal profile] anke.

It is part of my Stranded World series.

There was a knot sitting on the skein of reality, a heavy knot with complex weaving that spoke of intentional tying and tangling. Winter walked away from the camp of trailers and RV’s, walked to the small town’s corner store, and passed his suit jacket to the old man sitting at the picnic table there.

“That’s a nice coat.”

“Custom tailored. But I don’t need it where I’m going. I need something less obvious.”

The old man’s bleary eyes turned sharp for a moment. “Son, you’re going to have to change more than the coat for that.”

Winter undid his tie and added it to the sportcoat, then pulled the elastic out of his ponytail. He unbuttoned the first two buttons of his shirt and untucked it, so that it hung sloppily over his belt, then ran his hands through his hair until it was no longer tidy.

The old man nodded slowly. “It’s a start, at least.”

Winter nodded. “And a jacket?”

“You wanna borrow mine?”

“Consider the suit coat collateral.”

The old man nodded slowly, and slid out of the old denim-and-flannel, with its even older veteran patches and the three bike sigils. “You run into someone from the old gang…”

“I understand. I won’t claim those false pretenses.” Winter coughed. “That is, I ain’t gonna pretend to be something I’m not.”

The man squinted. “You do that better than you ought. And with your white hair, might ought to be older than you look.”

“Younger, usually. But I thank you. I should be back within the hour.”

Thus armed, Winter bought a 40-oz bottle of beer and tucked it, wrapped in its paper bag, loosely into a pocket. He scuffed his perfect shoes in the mud and carefully removed, as Spring would say, the poker from his ass.

He shuffled into the edge of the trailer camp, his head down and his shoulders hunched. The lines of the strands were twisted here, the rope-work turning into a complicated macramé pattern.

“Hey! What are you doing about here?” Not the Tattered-coat one, at least, probably not. This was a woman, with dishwater-hair and a jaw that spoke of poor dental work, blue jeans and three flannel shirts.

Winter raised his head slowly to her. “Looking for…” He blinked, blearily. There were panhandlers on the street, on the way to his office, back in the clean city where he lived (so far from Autumn’s raucous world). He imitated the oldest of those on a bad day. “Looking for… someone.”

“Well, you ain’t gonna find them around here. Get on with you. Go.”

Winter shuffled forward, took a messy swig from his bottle, and moved closer. “Looking,” he insisted. The strands knotted and twisted around her.

“And they. Ain’t. Here.” She reached out towards Winter.

He grabbed as if reaching for her hand, “missed,” and stroked his hand through her strands. The knots were tight, but he was the one who smoothed chaos lines straight. “Looking for you. Looking for Tattercoats.”

She froze at the name, then shuddered as he found and untied a knot. “Tattercoats isn’t…. isn’t…” She slumped to the ground.

Winter caught her on the way down and set her, carefully, on the stairs. “My apologies.” He had the scent now, though, in the knot he’d unhooked from her agency. “Sleep calmly.”

Winter himself was… not calm. He grabbed the strand he’d untied from the woman, and pulled.

He would be meeting this Tattercoats. Very soon.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/697268.html. You can comment here or there.

Betting Time

Mar12

This is to [personal profile] kelkyag‘s prompt to this bingo card.

It fills the “Greed” square.

It is part of my Space Accountant setting and comes before Accident and after Betting on It.

They were playing Flotsam, Genique and the two young men, wagering with time, their own free time, and Genique was losing.

She was losing, it appeared, badly. She was down thirty-six hours and a massage, most of it to Marsey the hitter, but a few hours here and there to Darretchon the hacker.

And Marsey had plans, she could tell, for every one of those hours. He was licking his lips. It would have been flattering, if it wasn’t a bit scary.

“One year.” He flicked the chips in.

Genique tried not to smile. The boy was hungry.

“One year.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/691458.html. You can comment here or there.

The Church in the Park, a story of Fairy Town for the Giraffe Call

Feb12

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

It takes part in my Fairy Town setting, after Fairies in the Church.

Names from Seventh Sanctum.

There were fairies in the church again.

Bishop Macnamilla was no longer a young man; indeed, he had not been able to make a pretense at youth for longer than most of the priests of the city had been alive.

And he had been watching the rot spread through his City and his Church for decades. He had seen the spread and done what he could – but not what he should – to stop it, back when he could make a pretense at youth.

The elders of the Church had not listened back then, and the young in the Church would not listen now. It had been up to him, no position and only the strength of his conviction, as a young man. And he had failed.

He tottered – he hated to admit it, but pride went before a fall and he was indeed tottering – back from Father Nehemiah’s abomination of a church. He could not do what needed to be done there, but there were other places. In this city, there were always the proper sorts of places. Before this place had been called ‘fairy town’ by the common people, before it had fallen to rot, it had been called the GodTown.

The Bishop went walking – limping – in the heart of the city, in the heart of a park where angels and demons feared to tread, where the dirty and the dusty had taken over. He tottered to the crossroads in the center of that park, and, from there, walked without fail, his back suddenly straight again and his steps sure, seventeen paces due north.

It did not take long for the fae to find him. In this park, they were lousy on the ground.

It took almost less time for the fae to realize where they were, and only a moment for them to realize who he was. But by then, the Fate was sealed.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/665806.html. You can comment here or there.

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.

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.

Gone Rummaging

Feb4

To [personal profile] meridian_rose‘s prompt to my other bingo call.

I didn’t know what I needed; I just knew something was lacking. Rummage sales were perfect for that, so I went… rummaging.

The third sale on the block was something different, an old house I didn’t remember seeing, tables all over the yard and in to the garage, boxes all over the tables and onto the ground. Old almanacs in foreign tongues, old gizmos with foreign faces, old dresses with antique laces.

In the back corner of the garage, I found it: a door frame with door, both carved all over. Something about it – of course I stepped through.

Next: Through the Door

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/657026.html. You can comment here or there.

Betting on It

Feb3

To [personal profile] kelkyag‘s prompt to this card for [community profile] trope_bingo.

This fills my “Bets/Wagers” square.

This is in my Space Accountant setting.

It comes before Accident and after Taking Chances.

Genique planted herself between two handsome young pirates sitting together at a table Quartermaster Marist Irio had identified as the “young bucks” table. She looked between the two of them – they were less fresh than Basi, but still shiny, new, and very handsome.

“Hello.” She offered the taller of the two her hand. “I’m Genique. I’m the new bookkeeper.”

He stared at her hand for a moment. Genique looked him over quickly. Ah, blue tattoos around each ear and down into his coverall. Trenciscot Tertius.

“My apologies.” She folded her hands into what, on her home planet, would be considered a “prayer” stance and nodded her head over her hands. “Genique Wadevier, from Maymonta. I’m the new bookkeeper.”

He folded his hands in a similar-but-different way, one curled over the other, and bowed a little bit deeper than she had. “Marsey Wilswoodronny. I’m a hitter and, more importantly, I do the tunnels and chutes. This is Darretchon; he does security systems and computers.”

Genique twisted to look at Darretchon; he was blonde where Marsey was brunette, his skin dark-tanned where Marsey’s was naturally chocolate, and he had a long, braided beard, where Marsey was smooth-shaven. More importantly for the moment, he had bone plugs in his earlobes and three silver rings in his left ear.

Bookkeeper did not out rank security systems, not on a pirate ship. Genique pressed the heels of both hands to her forehead and lowered her head. “Darretchon.” The Abrandell system was known for its rather stringent rules.

That did not, it appeared, apply to pirated. “Please, please.” He touched one hand to his forehead. “Genique. Miss – Miss? – Wadevier.”

She dropped her hands and smiled at him. “Definitely Miss. You?”

“Ah, still Misten. Wives aren’t really… well, it’s a pirate ship. And I’m a pirate.”

And the Abrandell did not look any better on piracy than anyone else (except perhaps Trenciscot Tertius, but they were, after all, founded by pirates of one sort and another). “Well. It appears that I am, too.” She lifted her glass. “To piracy.”

The young men seemed startled, but Marsey grinned at her wide enough to show two gold-covered teeth and lifted his glass, which got Darretchon to lift his glass, and then they were drinking.

“So.” Genique had been gifted with a deck of playing cards from the Pit Master (gifted or bribed, who was counting?); she pulled them out now. “I know they know the game Flotsam on Trenciscot Tertius, because it was a Trenciscotian who taught it to me. Do you know it as well, Darretchon?”

“Flotsam? Yes. But what are we wagering? You’re new, aren’t you, Miss Wadevier?”

“Please, call me Genique. And yes. I have very little more than what you see on me right now.” Which was true, so long as you had a broad definition of very little. Gifts and bribes were in not short supply around here.

“Flotsam doesn’t really work without wagers.” Marsey was already hooked, leaning forward. “What do you have in mind… Genique?”

She pulled out a set of chips from her pocket, the other half of the Pit Master’s gift. She watched their faces fall – nobody wanted to play for tokens. “Why don’t we say…” she pushed a white chip forward. “This is ten minutes.” A red chip: “a half hour.” Blue: “A night.” She’d skip green; she pushed forward one black chip: “A week.”

Darretchon swallowed. The Abrandell were sometimes prudish… “Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Miss… Genique?”

“I think she is.” Marsey was almost purring. “I’m game. Come on, Darret. It’ll be fun.”

Darret looked between the two of them and, finally, nodded. “I’m in.”

Betting Time

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/655103.html. You can comment here or there.