I am taking prompts on the theme of “Begins with Pi-” (preferably a phrase rather than a word).
Content warning, this one is definitely inspired by current events.
Also, I have the typing version of a sore throat – my right ring finger is sad – so pls. forgive any typos.
đŹ Continue reading
A story of holidays!Â
Yesterday, I was trying to finish a quest in 4theWords (and I did!) and I asked for prompts – here on Mastodon and here on Twitter. (Still open if something strikes your fancy; I’m having fun with writing prompt stories right now).Â
Sheâd done so well.
It was nearly dawn on the tenth of December and Xamira was sitting on her porch, watching the world and, perhaps, gloating a little bit.
Moving it earlier had been the easy part.
The pumpkin spice had been a boon, she had to admit. Xamira sipped her latte and licked the slightly-cinnamon-flavoured whipped cream off of her lip. She owed her sister in the coffee industry a favor for that one â now, even if they had never tasted a proper pumpkin pie or carved a jack-o-lantern, people started thinking Pumpkin as soon as the first chilly night came.
The crafts industry had been a big plus, too. Xamira had three blogs where she talked about autumnal crafts, autumnal cooking, and costume-making. Her Gluten, Nut, and Dairy-Free Ladyfingers (shaped like real fingers and with only natural food colorings!!) were such a hit that at least once a year her server crashed. Ditto the $10 Costumes that look like $100+ and Beyond the Sexy Everything: looking Hot on Halloween without Fishnet.
There were even posts up now on r/HotHalloween â Started to plan next yearâs costumes (yes plural). What do you think about the librarian from the Mummy?
This year, Xamira hadnât even had to start the planning-for-next-year posts; theyâd just popped up organically.
That part â and Seven Spooky Wreaths You Can Make in a Weekend, and then My Husband Decorated My House for the Holiday, Can You Top It? â those were all her, no favors to a sister or cousin needed, and Xamira was pleased. The cinnamon on her tongue tasted like victory, like that PTA meeting where sheâd first suggested they hold Practice Trick or Treating the week or two weeks before in the school, so kids âknew what to expect.â (which turned out to be mostly more candy). Xamira had done a lot on her own.
Of course, she did have a cousin in inflatables who had pushed the first âspookyâ lawn decorations for the season â Xamira smiled across the street at the neighborsâ yard, where a dragon taller than their first floor puffed menacingly at passers-by. And once you got people to decorate, especially outside, then inertia would help everything along and those decorations would stay up longer, and longerâŚ
Xamira had managed to take a small holiday whose influence lasted a few days at best to a season-long extravaganza of pumpkins, candy, and being someone else for a while.
She sipped her latte again as the sun crested the horizon, and sighed as a sort of pepperminty swirl touched her tongue. 70 days. She had managed 70 days.
But on the 71st day, no matter what she did, Christmas reigned.
Across the street, the neighborsâ dragon became a giant tree. Xamira wrapped her shawl around herself and headed inside before the cold really came.
70 days was quite impressive, she told herself again. Nobody else had managed that much.
Maybe next year sheâd aim for a post-Labor-Day sale. Back to School with Pumpkins?
Dress Up for your First Day ⌠as a cat!
She had time. Even redditor CostumeFreak only had two sketches and one costume prototype done yet.
Want more?
For non-USians, Labor Day is generally considered the end of summer in the US.Â
It’s the first Monday in September & is one of our Federal Holidays.
Pumpkin Spice Latte – now earlier than ever!
Written to Brian’s prompt to my Third Rail Prompt Call.Â
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There were places that Macha, daughter of Nollaig, of Istvia’s line of the wisdom, would like to be for Beltane.
There were people she would like to spend the holiday with.
There were two in particular she would actively enjoy spending the holiday with and another seven who would be fun, and by the light of the Lady and the will of the Consort, that was where she ought to be.
The holiday was for such things, after all, for rolling in the grass under the Lady’s eyes and no other’s judgement. Continue reading
a story for my New Year’s Prompt Call, which you should go prompt at please, here.
She had learned tricks in her time, and one of them was the fuel that kept her going.
She wasn’t supposed to keep going, that was part of the problem. She was a construct, and she had been built for one particularly strange revenge that had been intended to last a couple weeks, maybe a couple months. She had been designed to build this one person up and then watch them crumble down, and she had done very well at her job. Continue reading
Evangaline was making chocolate fudge for the high school holiday bake sale.
In a normal house, in a normal family, this would be a nice, sane, normal activity.
In a normal house she probably wouldn’t be using her great-grandmother’s recipe, written out on an old index card, likely by her grandmother or her mother. Or she might, but she might not be using her great-great-aunt’s measuring spoons, the ones that had a tendency to yell at you when you were going to put in too much of just about anything.
And if she hadn’t been using her great-grandmother’s recipe, she wouldn’t have been grinding cinnamon sticks and dried cayenne peppers by hand, nor what she have been putting in a tiny drop of devil’s tears or the shake of pixie dust.
Her family’s fudge always sold out, no matter how many trays they made. “It just makes the holidays more magical,” Mrs. Steinberg down the street liked to say, with a wink and a laugh that suggested she, too, kept her great-grandmother’s recipes wrapped in silk and boxed in ivory and ironwood.
Evangaline always made sure to get an extra helping of Mrs. Steinberg’s chocolate babka, too. It made the holidays feel… proper.
And maybe a little bit more magical.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1006645.html. You can comment here or there.
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kc_obrian‘s prompt to my “write something short, Lyn” prompt call here. It is set in my TĂr na Cali setting; read more about Cali here.
This story is open to all readers on Patreon!
Nobody knew where he had come from, and among the Queen’s courtiers, this was a strange and unheard-of occurrence. He was tall, like an American, fair and freckled, like a Californian, polite and brilliant, like a politician. He sat by the Queen’s side in meetings of state and he spoke, quietly, and only when he was asked to. He, it was said, counselled Her Majesty on all matters….
(read on)
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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/962413.html. You can comment here or there.
This piece was written to K.C.O’Brian’s prompt on my “Write something short, Lyn” prompt call here. It is set in my TĂr na Cali setting; read more about Cali here.
It is a beginning, not a complete story. Â You can always commission more of any story if it piques your interest!
This is set in a previous generation of TĂr na Cali.Â
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Nobody knew where he had come from, and among the Queen’s courtiers, this was a strange and unheard-of occurrence. He was tall, like an American, fair and freckled, like a Californian, polite and brilliant, like a politician. He sat by the Queen’s side in meetings of state and he spoke, quietly, and only when he was asked to. He, it was said, counselled Her Majesty on all matters.
He wore no collar and no ring, he claimed no title, and he acknowledged no mother’s name. He was called only Peter, in a land where almost everyone waved long names like flags displaying their wealth and their lineage. He claimed no honors at all, except Queen’s Councilor, which was a position that had not, until that day, existed.
He had been here for months, but now, every whisper and every rumor was coming up again, louder, barely hidden. Continue reading
An excerpt
…I had owned Robert for five days at this point. He had, just to remind you:
* Broken a window and bent a safety grate
* Burnt down the tool shed in the back
* Beaten up three other slaves
* Broken my nose (accidentally)
He had also withstood:
* isolation
* limited meals
* scorn and verbal shaming
* physical punishment, including the belt
* and more isolation.
We were now at the point where I was ready to do just about anything, just to make him listen. I found myself staring at him – chained in my wine cellar, panting, with his face and his feet bloody, the former from the police he had fought and the latter in my last attempt to make him listen. And it clicked.
“All right.” I pulled up a chair – a barrel, to be specific – and sat down. “Clearly, this is not working.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“Why are you being so difficult?” I admit, I probably sounded a bit petulant.
“I don’t want to be here.” He yanked against the chains. “I don’t want to be your little pet.” Another yank, digging the metal into his already-bleeding wrists. “And I don’t know what the hell you want from me.”
I have mentioned I’d never owned an American slave before. It was a bit of a revelation. “They didn’t explain it to you, in the market?”
“They told me to sit down and shut up. If all you wanted was ‘sit down and shut up,’ we probably wouldn’t be sitting in this dungeon.”
“It’s a wine cellar.” I waved my hand. “All right.” I made a decision, sitting there in that cellar. It wasn’t normal; it wasn’t in any of the advice books about keeping slaves. But slaves are, after all, people. And I was going to have to work with the person I had. “I’ll make you a deal.”
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kc_obrien‘s Prompt, also the title of this piece.
If you want more, oh, there’s got to be a lot more.
Just drop a tip in the the tip handcuffs:
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/833936.html. You can comment here or there.
From kc_obrien‘s prompt.
Facets of Dusk is still lacking a landing page; Tir na Cali’s page is here and here on LJ
“Her?”
The Agent set down her scope and shook her head. “She doesn’t seem like all that much, Joe. She’s pretty enough, but nothing stunning.”
“Look again,” her partner insisted. “Look at her eyes.”
The Agent took another look, and set down her scope far more carefully. “Shit,” she shook her head. “What in the Consort’s pants are we going to do with that?”
âRun?â her partner suggested. âRunning sounds good.â
~
“What do you mean?” Cole was impatient with, well, with everything, but with things that were esoteric, magical, he was even less tolerant than Simon. He shook his head at Josie. “You’re not making any sense.”
“Actually, she is,” Alexa corrected gently. “The Doors don’t always lead to the same place every time, that we know. It seems to be part volition, part unknown variables – and I think one of those unknown variables could very easily be a pulling from the other side.”
“A need,” Josie agreed, “or something very intense.”
~
Blaise stared at the small fire in her back yard, the roasting remains of the pigeon crackling as bits of fat fell into the flames. If she burnt it enough, maybe nobody would ever find out how it had died. If she roasted this area enough, maybe noobdy would ever know what she had done.
“Blaise!” Her mother, she thought dispassionately, sounded terrified. Sometimes she thought the daft bitch knew more than she let on. “Blaise, honey, step away from the fire, please. You know how much I worry about flame.”
She closed her eyes, willing the inferno back inside of her. “Yeah, mom,” she murmured, trying to sound innocent. Naive. “Yeah, Mom, I know.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/198972.html. You can comment here or there.