Tag Archive | prompter: kiarrith

Sight And Sense, a continuation story of Autumn

Apr19

After/concurrent with Nothing could possib-lie go wrong, Places One Doesn’t Go, At Home, and A Wink.

The man with the eyeball tattoo was looking at Autumn when his eyebrows went up. His gaze slid off of her; Autumn glanced briefly, but he wasn’t looking at anything obvious in the physical world.

She stepped inside her tent while his attention was elsewhere and shifted her own vision Strandward, looking for the disturbance that had clearly caught his attention. Just as she opened her vision, her own Strands yanked at her.

The tug was tangible and sudden, pulling her from three points like an off-balance marionette. She didn’t need to look to know: the cool blue of Winter’s
strand pulled from her right temple, where she’d painted his arrow under her hairline. The green-yellow of Summer’s strand pulled from her breastbone, where she’d painted a mask. The orange-and-blue of Spring’s strand yanked from down lower, where she’d painted the chaos sign just below her navel.

Her family was here, and they were doing… something. Autumn called to the woman in the next booth over to cover her till. Something strange was going on.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1091102.html. You can comment here or there.

At Home, a story of Spring

Apr18

After/concurrent with Nothing could possib-lie go wrong and Places One Doesn’t Go.

The fest was wild, and Spring and Lance were in the heart of it. A place like this didn’t need too much tangling – so many people here were already quite twisted up, wound in with other people, braided in with their own stories. But it was still fun to watch the tangles and knots, and it was still just a fun place to be, where nobody would look sideways at the girl with chaos tattooed on her chest or the handsome man in the very-well-fit pants and silky shirt who somehow seemed at home in the sea of tie-dye and batik, ripped denim and torn flannel.

“You look perfect,” Lance told her. “You’re aligned exactly with this place, did you know that?”

Spring stretched up, fingers tickling the air. “I know. This place is my place. It’s my people.” She dropped her arms so she could wiggle her fingers at a man covered in black-ink tattoos. “It’s like home, you know, like family? Can’t stand to spend all your time there, but it’s awesome when you go back for a bit.”

“Excuse me.” The voice cut across the cacophony, although it sounded both quiet and calm. “I believe you are mistaken about some important matters.” There was no speaker visible. The sound was coming from the back fence.

Spring grabbed Lance’s hand. “Speaking of family… we need to be over there. Now.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1089751.html. You can comment here or there.

Places One Doesn’t Go, a continuation story, involving Winter

Apr15

After /concurrent with “Nothing could possib-lie go wrong.”

“Hey, the insurance convention’s down the street!”

Festivals like this one were not exactly Winter’s cup of tea, nor were they his forte, nor were they a place of pleasure for him. They were loud and raucous, chaotic by nature, and crowded. And as much as he disliked them, other people disliked him being there.

“Look, man, I don’t know what they told you at the academy, but that’s just not undercover. Also, I’m not dealing anything illegal here.”

They were, however, the best place to meet other Strand-weavers, if you knew the proper places to look.

“Excuse me.” The woman in the pottery booth looked less likely to dislike him on sight than many. Her strands were calm and her peace was deep and thorough. “Have you seen anyone else who looks grossly out of…”

“Hey, who do you kids think you are! This is a private party!”

“Excuse me.” He nodded politely at the woman. “I think I see who I’m looking for now.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1088595.html. You can comment here or there.

Nothing could possib-lie go wrong… a story beginning of Summer/Bishop/Mellie

Apr10

I got lots of prompts for the triad but I’ll call this kiarrith‘s.

Title from this Simpsons quote

“So, this is…” Bishop was usually the calm one, but today, he was nervous. He was’t exactly shifting from foot to foot or anything, but that could be because they were walking rather quickly down Main Street, which didn’t leave him room to fidget. “Well, what exactly is it?”

“Well, exactly…” Summer shot him a cheerful grin. “It’s a bunch of things. It’s a craft festival that the townies and the visiting parents love. It’s a music festival after-hours that the students – and some of the townies – like. And its…” She gestured vaguely with both hands.

Mellie picked it up. “It’s a thing for people like your family, right?”

“If you know the right places and the right people, yeah. There are Strand-workers everywhere.” Summer tapped the wooden fence three times in a triangle, and a door swung open. “Like this place.”

“Are you sure…” Bishop hesitated, his hand on the fence.

“Oh, come on,” Summer coaxed. She had her bright smile on, the one that generally made either him or Mellie go along with her plans. “They’re friendly folks, these people. Strand workers almost always are.”

“Hey, who do you kids think you are! This is a private party!”

Summer’s smile slid off her face.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1086184.html. You can comment here or there.

If a Tree Grows in the Forest… a drabble

Sep29

Written to [profile] kiarrith‘s prompt here

The thing was, the industrial areas of the city hadn’t been abandoned that long. 15 years since the last manufacturing business folded in the area, sure, seven since the last start-up trying to use the old spaces fizzled out. But there were hobos and drifters, skaters and hippies. There was always someone wandering through the space. Leticia walked through herself, Tuesdays and Thursdays when she didn’t have much time between work and classes.

Which is how she knew something was up when she encountered the oak grove. It was Tuesday, which meant she’d last been through this cut-through – between the old Gleason Works building and the even older Lomb plant, where the workers of both had once shared bag lunches and a brief bit of unfiltered sunlight – it had last been only 5 days ago.

Last week, the courtyard had been full of weeds, a little bit of trash, with a beaten path straight through the middle.

Today, there were five oak trees in a circle where a picnic table had once stood. They weren’t small trees, either; the smallest one was too big for Letitia to encircle with her arms.

She walked around the trees cautiously. This had to be some sort of trick, some sort of urban graffiti gone supremely weird. Trees just didn’t grow overnight. Not in a vacant lot, not anywhere.

Her foot hit something hard. Letita knelt down to look, perplexed beyond caution.

A piece of metal twisted out of the weeds, so rusted it fell apart in her hands. Another piece of metal caught her eye, white and pitted. In the flat metal, a heart was etched, dirt rubbed deep into the lines.

Letita felt chill. She knew this heart. If she pulled the rest of the metal out of the weeds, it would say QW + ZX. She’d puzzled over those initials and the heart’s wobbly arrow for months. They’d been carved into the picnic table, the table that had stood where the oak trees now grew.

Slowly, her heart in her throat, Letita turned around to look at the city skyline.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/987764.html. You can comment here or there.

Rumors about the Family, a story start for the Aunt Family

Dec10

I asked for Non-Addergoole Prompts here; this is to kiarrith‘s prompt.

The Aunt Family has a landing page here.

It was a whisper, not even a proper rumor, passed among the members of the family – mentioned as an overheard sort of thing in an e-mail, or drunkenly chuckled about in a party when the Powers That Be were busy being powerful elsewhere. Did you hear about the Aunt that got herself a cult?

Not even a proper Aunt, the rumors would continue. No sisters, a dead-end line. But that part, scandalous as it was, wasn’t nearly as shocking as the other part. And she’s being worshipped! Worshipped!

There were things you didn’t do, in the family. You didn’t trust men with power, you didn’t get pregnant if you were the Aunt, you didn’t bring men home – or women, or even cats – without running them by at least one Granny first. You didn’t show off your magic to outsiders, if you had any, or talk about it, if you didn’t.

And you certainly didn’t let people think you were a goddess.

But the rumors persisted. And, one day when her last child had left the nest, a woman named Stolen – a sensible, practical woman, a mother of four and already a grandmother of two, the sort who had put aside her tea leaves long, long ago – began making some discreet inquiries.

She had spent twenty-seven years working in insurance, and thus, in addition to being more cynical than most of her sisters, had a very well-honed skill with investigation, which she put to good use talking to relatives.

She might be a grandmother, but she was not yet, technically, a granny, and, besides, she was so down-to-earth that nobody really expected she’d be doing anything untoward. She was putting together a book of family legends, sure. It had been done before, but not recently. So people told her things.

And people outside of the family – they were easy. She might have put aside her tea leaves, she might have been solid and rational and dependable, but she was still what she was. People were easy.

It was thus that, two years into her youngest’s college life, Stolen found herself donning an all-covering blue robe and pulling the hood until it shaded her face.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/862984.html. You can comment here or there.

The Cat’s Paw, a story continuation of the Aunt Family

Dec4

I asked for Non-Addergoole Prompts here; this is to [profile] kiarrith‘s request for More Cat.

Aunt Family has a landing page here.

This comes after Family Secrets & Cat Secrets, which itself is after Cats & Grannies. and Cat’s in the Attic.

Beryl had the book now.

Radar found himself pacing, which was not common Radar behaviour, and possibly (he was no longer really certain) not really cat behaviour either. The family needed a strong, knowledgeable witch – Aunt, whatever – again. Eva did not want to be steered, which was good. But it meant that Radar was going to have to work sideways around things.

Radar was not good at working sideways, and he wasn’t really certain if it was the best idea. But, while he had been instilled with certain values, he had not been given precognizance, which he felt showed a lack of foresight on his creators’ parts. So he had to guess.

Guessing meant he’d put the most important book in the family’s history in the hands of a teenager – not even definitely the next Aunt, no matter what the family thought, although she was definitely already a witch – and hoped that she wouldn’t spill her soda on it or, possibly worse, spill the beans to all and sundry.

Beryl was proving good at keeping secrets so far. If he’d had fingers to cross, Radar would have crossed them.

Instead, he paced, while nearby, Beryl sat with the book, a laptop, a family dictionary, and a notebook open, taking precise notes on everything she read.

Finally, content that she was far too engrossed to notice him, Radar hopped up on the dresser and slid her cursed necklace over his own neck.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/859841.html. You can comment here or there.