Tag Archive | prompt: origfic

A Change of Pace, a story of Tír na Cali for the OrigFic Bingo

Dec26

To thnidu‘s prompt to my orig-fic card. This fills the “Change of Pace” slot.

This is set with new characters in my Tír na Cali setting; its landing page is here.

This is a Cali storywith no slavery. 😉

The Duchess’ family did not often eat together.

Her children were, all but the twins, grown adults, and since they were all but the twins male, they were mostly married as well.

Niles, who still lived at home, helped his mother’s head of household plan the meal; Jeriel and Lauriel, the twins, helped the head of the maids arrange the seating. The Duchess had seven children, five daughters-in-law, and eight grand-children; the seating arrangements took a bit of planning to get everyone where they needed to be. Add in that Achishar wasn’t speaking to Emlen’s wife (nobody could remember why anymore) and a half-dozen other feuds, and seating the family for dinner became rather good training for some day running a fractious and wild Duchy.

“Do you think it’ll work out?” Niles was the twins’ go-to for questions. He had far more free time than the Duchess, and was old enough that he knew everything.

“I think…” He folded several napkins while he considered his answer. “Whatever our Lady Mother is wishing to work out here will work out. The informal place settings are a cue, and the mid-week date. She’s looking for a ‘family dinner,’ not something states-like.”

The twins shared a look. Jeriel led for the next question. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” Niles almost never admitted that. It was enough to shut his sisters up.

~

“I thought we could use a change of pace.” The Duchess looked around her assembled children, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren. “I thought all of us could use an hour or two where we were not statespeople but simply family.”

Boone’s wife Lady Dorseigh, the Countess of South March, said what many of them were thinking. “I don’t understand how that can be, your Ladyship.”

“Hannah. Today, for the next hour, I’m just Hannah, or, if you want to be very informal, you can call me ‘mom.'”

Lady Dorseigh, finding herself the designated spokesperson for the table, sounded as perplexed as most of them felt. “…Why? Why… Hannah?”

“As I said, I think you could use a change of pace. I think I could use a change of pace.”

It was Niles who finally figured it out. “Think of it,” he offered, “like taking your shoes off and falling down in your private sitting room. This is that, only with a handful of other people who understand. A breather.”

“A breather.” Lady Dorseigh nodded slowly; the others followed suit, in time with their ability to understand. “This is a lovely Yule gift. Thank you… mom.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/621255.html. You can comment here or there.

Then and Now – Audrey and Sage, Dragons Next Door

Dec24

To [personal profile] kelkyag‘s prompt to my orig-fic card. This fills the “Then and Now” slot.

Audrey, Sage, and Jin are part of my Dragons Next Door setting; its landing page is here.

Then

“The centaur next door is foaling.” Sage came home late at night, his sleeves rolled up to his shoulders. “And the pixies in the mailbox could use some help… oh. Oh, Audrey, blessings from the bottom of the world, what…”

That had not been the reaction I’d been expecting, but I would take it. “It appears…” My voice was a little more shaky than I’d thought. I coughed, sipped my soothing infusion one-handed, and tried again. “It appears it’s going around. Kidding season, perhaps?”

“Kidding…” I had never, never in our years, heard Sage’s voice do that, that thing where it squeaked at the end. Never seen his composure shaken. “Audrey, did you do this on your own?”

I lifted up the tiny baby so he could see own firstborn. “Nonsense, Sage, you had something to do with it.” He was so distraught, I had to throw him a bone. “Mistress Gnomen served as midwife.”

“I was going to…”

“Plans change, my love. It’s all right.” Everything was all right. We had each other, and we had our son.

Now

“Plans change, my love. It’s all right.” I lit the candle in the warmer and tried not to glance out the window.

“It’s his birthday.” Sage was pacing. My beloved was not very often distressed, but when he was, it was a sight to be seen. I was, truth be told, a little surprised that there weren’t sparks coming from his fingers. “He’s late.”

“He’s our son, Sage. Something probably came up.”

Sage’s cheeks darkened. No, that was not what I’d wanted. “Like his last birthday?”

“Sage, darling.” What to say to that? Yes, like his last birthday. Like the day Jin was born and many of the birth-days in between. But that would not help matters, when Sage was waiting impatiently to gift his firstborn with his adulthood, and that firstborn had, in the time while we were busy, gone and taken it on his own.

Sage sighed. “I know. But it’s his eighteenth birthday. And you made his favorite meal.”

“Sorry I’m late.” The door slammed. When you had teenaged boys, the door often slammed. “We got stuck in the middle of a pixie debate, and you know how those are. Oh, Mom, Dad… this is Bianna.”

A sip of a soothing infusion calmed me; by the time Jin and Bianna made it into the dining room, I was smiling and ready. Our son was home; everything was all right.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/620399.html. You can comment here or there.

Falling from Grace, a story for the Orig-fic Bingo

Dec18

To [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith‘s prompt to my orig-fic card. This fills the “Grace” slot.

Um also oops I accidentally tripped and um a setting? <.<

It had become a bit of a thing among the teens, the dispossessed, and the disillusioned, those hiding out under bridges, under water, under rafters from the things that called themselves The Deities.

They called it the Fall from Grace, the kids did. It involved a small bottle of something sold on the black market as Angel’s Tears, a kystka-stylus, and the patience of saints. But these kids had patience, or at least they had desperation, which can serve in its stead.

The bottle of Angel’s Tears, applied carefully with the stylus, would burn the skin and then evaporate, leaving behind it perfect thin lines of scars. It did not burn everyone – that was the odd part – but it had become a rite of passage under-bridge and under-rafter, and those who had successfully scarred themselves showed off their patterns, elaborate and plain, swirling and sharp, as badges of honor.

It was, of course, illegal, forbidden by The Deities and their Voices. Angel’s Tears themselves were verboten, along with thousands of other substances, some of them seeming quite benign, but that did not stop the black market in them from moving product rapidly and constantly. Most of the forbidden items could be disposed of into a canal or a dumpster quickly, if a Deities’ Eyes happened to be passing by, and often they were.

The Deities’ Eyes did not swim, as far as the citizens of the city could determine. They did not swim, and they definitely did not dive. Nor did the Voices; nor did the Deities themselves. Thus, of course, swimming and diving, too, were outlawed.

Swimming did not leave a mark, and was itself a means of escape from capture. Bootlegging could be hidden. Falling from Grace…

Falling from Grace marked you permanently. It said to all who chose to see, here I am, the disenfranchised, the displaced, and I defy your laws. It said to anyone who chose to see you bare that you had stuck your chin up, gritted your teeth, and applied Angel’s Tears to your skin.

And it said that you were such that the caustic Grace of the Deities, their distilled essence, their sweat and spit and piss… all that Angel-effluvience that went into the thing called Tears… that the distilled Grace of the Deities burned your very skin.

It wasn’t so much Falling from Grace as jumping, but had become quite the thing in recent nights.

A kystka or kistka() is a stylus for applying heated wax to pysanky. As I pictured Angel’s Tears being viscous, it was the first tool that came to mind.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/618972.html. You can comment here or there.

Freedom, Orig-Fic, Stranded World

Dec18

To Rix_Scaedu‘s prompt to my orig-fic card. This fills the “freedom” slot.


Autumn and Winter are characters in my Stranded World setting; this story is earlier in their lives than most of the stories.

“It’s about Freedom.” Autumn sat on the edge of the bridge, feet dangling over the edge, not so much looking at the water as looking at the reflections in it. Hers, wild-colored and wild-haired, and his, cool-hued and smooth-tressed. Even here, even ‘dressed down,’ he looked proper.

“Of course it is about freedom. Everything in life is.” Winter spoke in measured tones, careful tones.

“How can you say that?” She twisted to look at in properly now, him, the connections between them, the lines around his life. “When you are so tied up in strands, so smoothed-out and constrained?”

“How can you say you are free?” His voice was, of course, calm. “When you do not know where your next meal will come from, when you are uncertain where you will sleep at night, when you have no home?”

“This is the life I chose.” Autumn tried not to raise her voice too much. He was her brother. He was her big brother; he would always be her big brother.

“And this is the life I chose, Autumn.” He patted her shoulder. “You find your freedom on the open road, and I… find mine in an office. Are we not both free?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/618700.html. You can comment here or there.

Lost in Translation, Orig-Fic, Addergoole

Dec17

To Rix_Scaedu‘s prompt to my orig-fic card. This fills, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Lost in Translation square.

Summer, Between Years 9 & 10 of the Addergoole School

“You’d think this would be easy.” Shira Pelletier stared at the document in front of her.

“No.” Feu Drake shook his head. “No. Some might think this is easy, but I would not be one of them again.”

“You’re doing it again.” She glanced up at him, not yet irritated but willing to sound it.

“Of course I am ‘doing it again.’ I am not certain you would ever be reasonable to expect something else of me, j-“

“If the next sound out of your mouth is a jae, you’re doing this on your own, Drake.” Now, now she was becoming actually irate.

“You are rather younger than I am.” He managed to make the statement of fact sound like a reproach. Shira was un-reproached.

“And does that mean that I am your junior?”

She caught the faintest twitch that meant she’d either amused the man or caught him by surprise. “You posit a curious question… Shira.”

“See? I knew you could use my use-name if you tried hard enough.” She allowed herself to be mollified, because if she kept this up much longer, it would no longer be sparring and be something far more like flirtation. (Maybe. With Feu Drake, it was hard to tell even when he was naked. Clothed and poring over ancient papers, there was almost no option short of a Working to get a certain answer). “This part of this piece makes no sense.”

“Are you sure it’s not you?”

“I am certain it’s not me, Feu Drake.” She pushed the sheet over to him – a piece of gold pressed thin as paper and inlaid with the ancient script of Old Tongue, Idu a’Iduþin. “This part here, the prophecy. ‘The mother who cares not?'”

Drake frowned. “‘The mother who…’ yes, ‘who gives no caring for her children but simply births them as the mice do.’ An odd way to phrase that.”

As the mice do. Shira sighed. “Oh. Well, it can’t be one of ours, can it?”

“I don’t see why not. Addergoole was prophesied in at least three different texts.”

Shira looked back at the words. “‘Shall…’ but something is missing, isn’t it?”

“Lost.” Drake picked up a leather-bound book and passed it to Shira. “But here’s a Greek translation. You think it’s one of your Students?”

As the mice do. “Let’s just say, I’m hoping it’s a mistake of translation.”

“jae” is a diminutive honorific; the prefix for those who outrank you is sa’, and for equals you simply skip the honorific.

Shira Pelletier and Feu Drake are professors in the Addergoole School.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/617966.html. You can comment here or there.

December: OricFic Bingo/Prompt Call

Jan29

So, I have this:

B I N G O
taking a chance storm tower Freedom magic
anniversary bribery [sports & games] Lost in Translation Home
evening the odds [Forgiving] PICK ANYTHING
Older Witches		 Grace Promises broken
[the next best thing] Disability (chronic) [disparate] Now & Then
Then & Now		 Under Pressure
lost and found [wishing] [parent(s)] change of pace Knowledge
Knowledge

from [community profile] origfic_bingo

And this is what I’m going to do:

Pick a square, and give me a prompt with that as a theme. I.e., Promises Broken, Junie and her teacher.

First prompt will get written; after that I’m going to go for a Bingo, so prompts that are within a line of the first prompt are more likely to get written.

Squares that have been prompted to will be [bolded and bracketed]; squares that have been written will have a link. Please feel free to prompt any square, even those filled.

First Bingo will be posted free.

Go!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/617647.html. You can comment here or there.