Tag Archive | prompt

The Pay Was Good

Jul11

From kc_obrien‘s prompt: “Can I get a short piece from another perspective of some of the internees/guards in the community featured in Discovery Channel/Invisibles (LJ Link)?

***

The pay was good.

That’s what Dylan told himself when he took the job. It was good pay, better than anything else a washout jock had right to expect. It let him support Kaylee and their baby girl and, a year later, their baby boy, and it was out in the middle of nowhere – just about the safest place to be, if it weren’t for the monsters they were guarding.

Not that they looked like monsters, or acted like monsters, or quacked like ducks in any way. Sure, they looked a little funny, and had a little bit of magic here and there, but that was like calling housecats dangerous because they bore a faint resemblance to tigers.

But the pay was really good. Dylan reminded himself of that when his fellow guards made rude cracks, the sort of stuff that, if it had been any ethnicity and not faeries, El-hee-may as they called themselves, would have gotten them fired, sued, and blacklisted. He reminded himself of new shoes on his baby girl’s feet and the little cottage Kaylee loved so much when a squirmy kid with scales like a snake’s bit him and his hand swelled up for a day and a half.

The day that the teenaged girl with the goaty bits came crying to him (because he was the nice guard) because three of the other assholes had gotten her in a corner and threatened to do worse if she told, he went home and held his family tight for hours, and wondered if any amount of money could really be worth it.

The paychecks stopped coming a week later.

***

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/76564.html. You can comment here or there.

Old Friends? Rin & Girey/Reiassan, from fayanora’s prompt

Jul11

From fayanora‘s prompt “An unexpected ‘Hello.'”

From Rin & Girey/Reiassan, after In Context (available in Tales for the Sugar Cat).

Speaking of context, the important thing to know here is: Rin’s nation has won the war over Girey’s, and she is bringing him home as her captive across the length of her country. Girey was the prince of the defeated nation, and is in enforced incognito (Girey is a very common name in their country) as the son of a dead Duke.

Rin & Girey have a landing page (LJ Link

Karak and Noni were generous, friendly hosts, and it took Rin little time at all to relax into their company. They’d fought together, after all, Karak and her, and she’d known Noni since they were children (even if, like Rin, the name Noni wore now wasn’t the one she’d worn then).

Even Girey started to relax. He still complained about the colors, but, some of what had to be his royal manners kicking in, not in front of their hosts, and less and less so she found the most muted Callanthe silks she could to dress him in, and a tailor that could actually fit the clothes to him. If his qitari buttoned on the left, well, it would be a while before he figured that one out, and he could complain then. In the meantime, it suited some small petty part of Rin’s soul to keep him in the dark, his clothes marking him as unskilled, if affluent, labor.

And, despite his complaints, he was paying close attention to the crowds as they shopped. There was a shift in his shoulders and his tone of voice since they got to Ossulund, the feeling that he was trying to act of be someone different. He seemed uncomfortable with the idea of Rin having friends, especially male friends that weren’t him. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he was jealous.

“Geer?” The voice, high-pitched, excessively feminine, and loud, came from across the marketplace. Rin turned before her prisoner did, uncomfortably curious. “Girey? Geer, hello!”

Now, he turned, though he glanced at Rin and their hosts first, and now all four of them were looking at the woman who was, despite the decorative shackles tinkling on her wrists, waving wildly at them.

“Friend of yours?” Rin murmured softly. If she had been, what she was, now, was a soldier’s war trophy, lovely and fragile in her tight, left-buttoned silk qitari and delicate house slippers, her blonde hair pinned in curls over her head. A decoration.

Girey’s shoulders were tense as he turned back to the belts they were looking at. “She must have the wrong Girey,” he muttered.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/76482.html. You can comment here or there.

Final Exams – Tír na Cali – from Wyld_Dandelyon’s prompt

Jul11

From Wyld_Dandelyon‘s prompt: “Final Exams.”

This comes after Frying Pan, Fire (LJ Link).

Despite rather constant warning from their teachers: “Don’t bond. Don’t get to close. You will be sold when school is over, and it is exceedingly unlikely you will be sold to the same household,” they had gotten close.

They had been picked up on the same run, Steve, Carl, Debbie, Jill, Jakub, and Seth, and before they’d come to the school, they’d already spent several days together in a cell just big enough for the six of them. By the time their final exams rolled around, they were close enough to know what the others were thinking.

Not that it was hard, right now; they were all thinking variations on the same thing: What happens next? What happens if I don’t do well? What happens if I do do well? Is this really happening to me?

They knew, in theory, what came next: either they passed their exams, or they were sent to work camps. They’d even had a field trip to the fields, to see what it would be like. To scare them into obedience, Seth assumed; the work camps were pretty much exactly what American propaganda said being a slave in California was like: hard, constant, dehumanizing labor.

If they did well, they had been assured they would be placed well in high-ranking households. It rankled, or at least it bugged Seth – they never talked about this part, as it sounded too much like sedition, and sedition had, they’d learned fast, painful consequences – to be working hard to get a position licking someone’s boots. But better licking boots than picking grapes.

“I’m worried about the titles and terms of address in Civics,” he admitted. They were crowded into the dorm room he shared with Carl and Jakub, trying to cram for exams.

“Sommelier and barrista testing,” Steve muttered. “I can never tell the reds apart, and that whipped cream trick…”

“Law,” Jill murmured. “The little nitty gritty laws that change with every Barony.”

“We’ll done fine.” That was Carl, who had nothing to worry about. “Chin up, and just try to sleep tonight. We’ll all do fine.”

“And then what?” Steve muttered. For that, Carl didn’t have an answer. None of them did.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/75980.html. You can comment here or there.

First Planting

Jul10

From clare_dragonfly‘s prompt: “Fae-apoc: the first planting.” Fae Apoc, clearly. Hob, I swear I got Dree from your name. (It’s actually Adriana Moreau, “dark one/little dark.” Um, she’s a bit dark. 😉

***

Dree surveyed the ruins of the city with a critical eye. Most of the people had left when the gods started fighting overhead. Of those who hadn’t, most had trucked out when the power plant had gone offline, or when the food stopped coming in. Dree and her small crew had lasted through that by building their fence up the moment trouble started, boarding up their windows when things got really bad, and moving into a nearby apartment building when the fires ruined their old neighborhood.

The winter had been hard, and they’d done their share of covert cheating to keep alive. The building hadn’t originally had a chimney, but who was left that knew that? A city of over a million now had maybe three hundred inhabitants, a good third of those refugees from larger nearby cities who hadn’t made it any further. They knew each other, their tiny conclave, only by what they chose to share, and, in Dree’s case, as in many others, that was precious little.

They’d made it through the winter on willpower, burnt furniture, and canned goods, but now the frost was gone, and something you could call spring was here. The yard near the apartment building had been a museum, once, and, inside, some art, mostly statues, still remained. But what mattered to them right now was the long stretch of ground which had been unplowed, mowed, fertilized, and well-tended for over a century.

They peeled off the sod, Dree and her crew and their team of fellow refugees, plowed up the lush, fertile soil, and planted scrounged seed after seed, watering with hoses and cans stolen from the houses of the dead and gone, muttering Workings when there were no humans to see.

Like the seeds, they had landed in a small corner of hospitable land in the midst of a burned-out wasteland. Like the seeds, they would grow and flourish. Like the seeds, they would live.

***

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/75333.html. You can comment here or there.

Three Inches, unknown

Jul10

This is from @Inventrix’s prompt for “a Pookah;” @DaHob picked species and name. Um, I might have just put pookah in Planner ‘Verse.

The world looked different down at 3″ from the pavers. More importantly, to Cynthia’s point of view, SHE looked different to the world at three inches from the pavers.

If she wasn’t careful, what she would look like was dinner, but she could work around that. Work under it, really; her small form was very good at burrowing, and there was a lot of space where the dirt was bare, space that, from her dim memories, would have been covered over, the last time she was through this city.

She’d eaten her way through a book, once, that had in it voles that really had to be called supervoles. Giant creatures that could dig through anything. While she wasn’t quite that impressive in her small form – she was under a foot long, after all – she could make mincemeat of loam or even hardpack clay.

And once she was there, under the lines of the wild gangs, under the places where the dirt tasted unhealthy and smelled like poison, she could pull back up, dirty and tired after an entire day but safe, into the small gardens at the heart of the city. She could pop her head up, and then the rest of her, traverse the rose garden while still tiny and furry, and then, with a shake to dislodge the dirt, she could stand.

The other girls in the chief’s harem wondered why she was his favorite. She was, they said, mousy (she didn’t correct them), small and a bit stout and brown. Her nose was pointed. But she, unlike them, got information to the chief that nobody else could and, while she lived, he would pamper and protect her, for that.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/75262.html. You can comment here or there.

Taking Prompts!

Jul10

…between now and 24 hours from when I began (18:32 EST tonigh), I will write to requests. Anything I can get done in a 10-minute writeordie (approx. 250 words, or a standard flash fic drabble in this journal).

Request away!

Original prompts post (LJ Link); what I’ve written so far:

Joff Gets a Pony (LJ Link)
Bringing Home the Bacon (LJ Link), Autumn, Stranded World
Frying Pan, Fire (LJ Link), Tir na Cali
Coming of Age (LJ Link), fae apoc

I will start working on prompts again in the next hour or so.

Tips are appreciated but not required; as always, a tip will get you more story (300 words per $5)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/74337.html. You can comment here or there.

Coming of Age

Jul9

This is from eseme‘s prompt asking for goddesses.

Fae Apoc in its early history.

***

Ακανθα bowed before her father. Head to the stone, weapon at her side, wings swept back, she prostrated herself in front of a god she had never presumed to believe she would meet in person.

“So you are the child I begat so many seasons ago,” Ares rumbled. “You are meet and fine in my sight, child.”

“Thank you, Lord,” she murmured. She knew the forms well enough; her mother and the priests had drilled her as surely as she’d ever been drilled in combat.

“More than that, however,” he continued, “I have seen you in battle. I have seen you protect your people, and your land. Do you know the ban I have set upon My children, little prickly one?”

She did not bristle at the translation of her name, because she wished to live to see the sun rise again. “I have heard of it, Lord Ares,” she answered cautiously.

“I’m sure you have. The poets speak of it in so many words, but none seem to understand how simple it is. The children of Ares, my child, are those who protect.”

“Yes, Lord Ares?”

“You have proven that this task you can do without fail, without faltering, without concern for your own well-being, despite the disadvantage of your sex. I am well pleased with you, and it suits me to give you a gift.”

Beware the gifts of the gods. “Thank you, Lord Ares.”

“There is a city near your village, a city which has of late been under siege. Take your mother, and your siblings. This city is yours now, Thorn of Ares, Prickly Sword. They shall worship Ακανθα there, as long as you remain worthy.”

She dared raise her head, now, to look at him. “You would place me as a goddess, Lord Ares?”

The god was smirking. “Your conception did that, Ακανθα. I give you your birthright.”

Ακανθα. Lily’s ancestor? And Acacia’s?

 

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/74193.html. You can comment here or there.

Bringing Home the Bacon – Autumn/Stranded World – KC_OBrien’s Prompt

Jul9

I am taking prompts tonight; this is from [personal profile] kc_obrien‘s prompt “Brining home the bacon”

Stranded World, Autumn

Autumn chuckled to herself every time she picked up bacon for dinner.

“Bringing home the bacon,” she murmured, although most nights, it was only to herself and the quiet walls of her van/RV/studio/home. “I’m such a good husband.”

It was a private joke, between herself and the thing that served her in lieu of a conscience: she was the good housewife, the good kid, the good husband. She was bread-winner and bread-baker and, in the end, bread-eater and crumb-picker too.

It wasn’t her only one-person inside joke, of course. She spent a lot of time, most of her life, really, alone with her own thoughts. On the road all the time – she spent, on average, a week with each of her siblings each year, and a week with Mom around Christmastime – she rarely had company with any staying power. Most people liked to have roots, a roof, a solid foundation. Most people liked to know what their role was. Autumn shook all that up.

She snipped the bacon into her pan, still chuckling, albeit ruefully. She’d made the bread-winner bacon-home-bringing joke to her last lover. Adam, although that hadn’t been the name she’d met him under. Her Gawain. He had bristled and tried to hide it, sulked (his busking wasn’t all that profitable) and tried to use that. He’d been lovely, friendly, and willing to throw his rucksack in the back of her van and travel with her. She was glad she hadn’t harbored any illusions beyond that. She wished that he hadn’t, either.

The bacon crisped and popped, making the place smell delicious and her mouth water. She toasted some bread and sliced a fresh tomato over her craft-fair mustard. The company was nice, once in a while, but she’d always be her own breadwinner, her own bread-maker… and probably her own crumbpicker, too. And that was just fine with her.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/73597.html. You can comment here or there.

Care Package, a ficlit of necessity #weblit

Jan30

Based in the same ‘verse/on the same planet as Friday’s 15-minute ficlet, this is from akatsuki_2007‘s prompt:
Bats
Bovril
Bulgaria
Book
Balaclava
Benadryl

The cave system had a great deal of several things. It had water, in streams and dribbles and the occasional waterfall. It had light, coming down from always-maddeningly-inaccessible holes high above or from tiny holes in the more reachable rock, and it had bats.

Bat-like creatures, Becky corrected herself, although Vas wasn’t there at the moment to scold her. (She would have welcomed his scolding, if it had come with a rope long enough to get out of the caves). Apparently mammalian winged creatures who preferred enclosed spaces, ranging in size from large-mouse to small-cat.

They were edible, although they tasted, no matter how she prepared them, something like doom and something like starving-might-be-preferable, and were, as they seemed to have little fear of her, amazingly easy to catch.

They were still, barely, more tasty than the bugs that were the other life form around, and she needed the calories they provided.

After two days of waiting in one place for the rescue that didn’t seem to be coming, Becky had been on the move, marking her trail with fluorescent blue paint that would not be easily mistaken for anything natural to this planet, and surveying her route as best she could, with most of her tools still up in base camp. It was slow going, but it was the job she’d been sent here to do, and it was better than waiting to die.

It was also cold going, the caves only a few degrees above freezing in many places. She burnt a lot of energy simply staying warm. The balaclava her mother had slipped in to a tidy care package kept her face warm; the Bulgarian wool socks kept her feet from freezing. And the things-like-bats gave her the energy to burn, and motivation to get out of the caves and away from them.

She tried stewing the things; they made mush. She tried frying them in their own fat; they made jerky. Roasting them did the best, but it was time-consuming. Served tartar, they had a bitterness that made the meat even more inedible. To add insult to injury, it seemed as if she was allergic to their fur.

She had some Benadryl, due to the same care package (she’d given up spare boots to balance her weight book; she had not once regretted the lost of boots, and thanked her mother wordlessly for every time she dug into her pack). She couldn’t take it often; it made her too drowsy to properly map her route, and the once she’d tried, she’d forgotten to blaze for nearly half a mile and mixed up north and south three times in a row. Still, it helped her sleep.

Only the Bovril in the bottom of her bag had gone unused. The salty meat paste had been a childhood favorite, and her mother had never really gotten the memo when “Yay, Bovril” had turned into, “crap, not Borvil again?” There it was, the heaviest thing in the care package, wrapped in her last remaining wool sock.

In desperation, eight days of stewed bat into her spelunking, Becky tried mixing the two, stewing the bat in a solution of Bovril and stream water, with a few cattail-like-plants roots cut into it for texture. To her surprise and relief, the resultant mush was not only edible, it was palatable. A little experimentation proved to find the ratio that was actually tasty.

Becky sent up another silent thank you to her mother, light-years away in her London flat, as she fell asleep for the first time in days with a contentedly full stomach. Now all she had to do was find a way out of the caves before she ran out of Bovril and Benadryl.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/2575.html. You can comment here or there.

Restraint, a story of TirNaCali for #3WW #weblit

Jan26

Three Word Wednesday is a once-weekly 3-word writing prompt.

Last week’s three words were descent, kill, surreal.

This is a sequel to Keyed Up and Gifted, and thus completes the triptych.

Restraint

She’d never admit it to anyone, but as she tried to pretend she wasn’t waiting for word, Ursula, granddaughter to Duchess Lemaria but heir to nothing more than the family temper, was nervous.

It was novel, almost thrilling, to be a bit frightened of a man, of a male slave. He was bigger than her, stronger than her – sure, the other harem slaves might be a bit taller than her, but very few of them seriously outmassed her – and he saw no reason why he should be obedient. It made him dangerous, and that made him exciting.

She was self-aware enough to know, then, that being miffed with him for taking his time to come visit her was silly, but still, she was both impatient and a bit annoyed. He’d gotten her gift days ago. Wasn’t he at least curious?

It was more than a little ridiculous, but she had been turning down invitations to go out, staying close to home in case he decided to grace her with his presence. She’d also declined three requests from Efran in as many days, the poor puppy. So very well-trained, she didn’t think he’d ever understand why she’d passed him over for the American.

Then again, her sisters and cousins wouldn’t understand, either. They liked their easy harem-slave bed partners. They liked their lives, in general, easy, and their lady grandmother loved to provide it.

Ursula wondered if she was the only one who noticed that, while the Duchess provided all of this, the men she took to her own bed were almost invariably Americans.

The phone startled her out of her sulk; she picked it up before the first ring had ended.

“He’s on his way.” She knew the voice at the other end – Toma, the harem mistress. “As you wished, Lady Ursula, he’s not restrained.” The woman’s voice was etched with disapproval.

“Thank you, Toma.” Now she was really nervous. It would take, what, ten minutes for him to walk here from the harems? More if he gave the guards trouble, less if he was in a hurry.

If he’d been in a hurry, he would have been here three days ago when he unwrapped her present. She brushed her hair, changed her shirt, and made sure the papers she wanted were at hand. She’d just started considering doing all of that again when the knock came.

She needed a personal assistant, but she didn’t like the constant crowding of having someone else in her living space. College and two years in military service had cured her of the need to be waited on hand and foot, anyway. She answered the door herself, be damned how it looked.

He stood there, Stephen, next to the guard, neither of them smiling, but without the violent tension they sometimes showed when she opened her door for them. His hands were clasped in front of him; he looked the most placid Ursula had ever seen him.

The guard bowed; belatedly, Stephen remembered to bow as well. “Your Ladyship, as requested by the harem, I’m delivering this slave to you.”

“Thank you, Emmund. You can leave him.”

Emmund was too gracious to glower in her presence, but he bowed and left stone-faced.

“Come in.” She wasn’t paying any mind to Stephen’s expressions yet, not until she could get her own emotions under control. She was alone with him, unchained, in her bedroom.

“You gave me a key,” he accused her, but he stepped into her room and shut the door.

“I did. Kill the lights and come over here.” The light on her nightstand would be enough, and it was an order he wouldn’t think twice about following.

“They forgot the chains.” He flipped the light switch off and followed her across the room, to the chair by the side of her bed. “Think you can get me to play footstool without them?”

“If I asked nicely enough.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and gestured at the chair.

He looked between her and it, looking for the trap, but sat, gingerly, glaring at her. “Why?”

She didn’t waste time dissembling or pretending she didn’t know what he meant. “You don’t seem to enjoy harem service.”

“You don’t seem to care all that much about my enjoyment.” She could see from his expression, though, that he knew that wasn’t entirely true. She’d hoped he’d noticed that.

“I enjoy your company, too,” she admitted. She didn’t want to see him broken by one of her harsher aunts.

“Are you going to lie to yourself if I move in? Tell yourself I was a good little boy and serve me dessert for yelling at you?” He sounded, she realized, confused. She’d changed the game just when he’d figured out the rules.

“I might.”

“I don’t want to be a lapdog like Efram. I won’t do it, Lady, no matter how much you whip me. Use me as a footstool all you want, you won’t break me.”

She smiled wickedly, crossed her feet at the ankles, and held her legs out in mid-air. “All right.”

He stared at her incredulously. “You can’t be serious.”

“And if I am?” A little thrill ran up her. She wouldn’t call the guards, not unless she thought her life was in danger. He could hurt her a lot without endangering her life.

“What’s in it for me?”

Ursula reminded herself forcefully that she’d wanted the untamed slave, the argumentative one, that she’d encouraged his bad attitude. “Answers. You want to know why I gave you the key, what I want from you. I, at the moment, want a footstool.”

He shook his head. “You expect me to curl up and act like a lapdog just because you want me to?”

“No.” This was fun! “I expect you to kneel and act like a footstool – you’re too big for my lap, anyway – because you want information.”

A moment paused, and another, and another. He was going to say no. He was going to threaten her. He was going to stomp out of the room. He was…

Kneeling in front of her, crouching, really, ass to heels, elbows and forehead to the floor, like she’d had him bound, that first time. “Yes, Lady Ursula.”

She set her feet down on his back and lounged. It was a bit silly, wasn’t it, having him like this? She didn’t even do things quite this bad with the born slaves (but, then again, they rarely needed reminding of their status). She picked up her files from the nightstand and flipped through them, although he couldn’t really seem them.

“This is a detailed lineage report I had worked up on your bloodline.” It hadn’t been cheap, or quick, but she had both money and time to spare. “You’re of Irish descent.”

“So are you,” he grunted, twisting to look up at her. “So?”

“Exactly.” She tapped the folder. “You come from the same ancestors as my people do, if you go far enough back. You’re, very, very distantly, my cousin. And Efran’s,” she added thoughtfully.

“Ha,” he snorted.

“Exactly,” she repeated. “You have a strong – strong being the imperative word – Irish bloodline. And strong men breed strong children.”

Under her feet, he froze. “Oh, hell no. No fucking way, you crazy bitch.”

She toed him gently in the kidney. “None of that.”

He settled, but his tone was not much more civil when he continued. “I won’t give you my kids to be raised as slaves.”

“I’d be bearing them, so they wouldn’t be slaves, they’d be royal. I’d be willing to allow you to share in their rearing, as well. It’s a better offer than anyone else would give you – you know most of them would just say ‘lay back and grab the headboard’ and consider that sufficient warning.”

He looked back up at her. “You’re serious. You want to have my kids.”

“It’s that or take your chances with the harem,” she pointed out, wondering which he would chose. How would she handle the stigma of being rejected by an American slave? Her sisters and cousins would never let her live it down.

“But I hate you. I hate everything about this place.”

“No-one said you had to like me, Stephen. You don’t even have to enjoy the sex, although it’s more fun all around if you do.” Gods below, had she just said that?

He sat silently for long enough that she began to wonder if she really hadn’t said it. “I’ll do it,” he agreed. “But I’m not going to be a very good pet for you, not like Efran would. Should have given him the key.”

She leaned over to stroke his cheek, loving the way he shuddered, trying to hold still and wanting to shy away. “I didn’t want Efran. I want you.”