Tag Archive | prompter: sauergeek

January by the Numbers 28: Everyone Eats Everything, a ficlet

Feb17

January by the numbers continues deep into February…

From sauergeek‘s prompt Everyone eats everything: a ficlet, although more of a start of a story than a story.

As far as strange rules and regulations go, the colonies usually didn’t rate too far up there. When they were colonies, at least, they had far too much to worry about to spend time making rules, other than the very direct: “everybody works” sort of regulations. It was only as time went on and they found themselves in situations where their original survival-based rules were insufficient that most places started coming up with more and more elaborate rules.

Egdarton Seven was a little unique in this matter. It was settled by a small, closed group – one of the few cases where that was allowed, but there was a trend for that around that time, social or avocation groups gathering together and filling a colony. It worked best if the group had wide enough skills to fill all the positions, because one or two outsiders in specialized, necessary positions led to some pretty bad social dynamics on some colonies.

Egdarton Seven, however, had none of the common problems, but it did have a long-standing hobby group with a wide range of skillsets, both within and outside the hobby group and, more, a wide range of already-extant rules and the sort of personalities who enjoyed enforcing said rules. The rules you need to know were posted at their rudimentary spaceport, and woe betide the visiting ship’s-crew or scientist who didn’t read and follow the rules. For a first offense they might be warned, if the person who caught them was feeling generous. For a second offense, they’d be escorted back to their ship and politely told not to come back.

(“What happens if someone part of the community breaks one of those rules?” asked a disgruntled scientist who hadn’t understood the severity or sincerity of the Oxford-Comma rule. The persons escorting the scientist to the ship had clucked in disapproval and not answered. If the scientist had been, perhaps, an anthropologist instead of a xenobiologist, things may have gone very differently for the colony on Egdarton Seven. Certain things were not actually allowed, no matter how they were written into the colony’s charter.)

The one rule that threw almost every visitor, the one rule that got more people evicted from their station, was one that every single member of the colony agreed on wholeheartedly: Everyone Eats Everything. In practice, this meant that if you hated a dish, you could eat a tablespoon-sized scoop of it and be done, but in theory it meant that every person on Egdarton Seven was eating the same things, and that the entire colony ate together.

Like every other rule on the colony, no official explanation for this edict was ever offered, although one teenaged member did like to whisper, melodramatically and none too seriously, “poison!” any time any visitor asked.

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After the Kinging, a commissioned continuation of the Aunt Family

Feb16

This is written to sauergeek‘s commissioned continuation of King(Maker) Cake and King for a Day, a story of the Aunt Family.
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Stone was cornered.

School started tomorrow, and he had never, ever, not since kindergarten, been so happy to be going back to school.

At the moment, he was cornered by his Great-Aunt Rosaria, who was, he had to admit, one of his favorite relatives – normally. Right now, he didn’t want to see another Family woman as long as he lived.

It had started with his mother, because nobody was going to argue her precedent, and then with his grandmother, because Eva was too polite to argue with her. And then Eva, Beryl and Chalce and even Amy, his sisters taking turns asking him questions that ranged from ridiculous (mostly Amy) to far too penetrating (Beryl),

Most of their family branch lived within three wide country blocks. The rest lived not all that far away, Uncle Hector and his wife Jennifer being the furthest at a thirty-minute drive by highway. Heck, there was even a very small cadet branch of the family, split three generations ago but growing with glacial slowness, living up on the lake in a nice row of cottages.

Stone was fairly certain he’d seen every woman over the age of twelve – some younger – and maybe a quarter of the men in both families. All he wanted to do was climb up in the tallest tree he could find and never come down.

“Come on.” Great-Aunt Rosaria offered him her hand. “You like Basil’s, right? The little diner down on the corner?”

Stone blushed. What he liked was Basil’s daughter Samantha, but he wasn’t going to admit that to his aunt, to any of his aunts. At least if Samantha was working, she wouldn’t look at him funny for being there with his old aunt. She seemed to get it – the family, the magic, the whole thing – without him ever have said a thing about it.

Rosaria patted his shoulder. “I thought so. Well, that’s a good thing, too. Healthy – at your age or any. So let’s take a little drive down there, shall we?”

“All right, Great-aunt Rosaria.” It’s not like he could say anything else.

It wasn’t until they were in Rosaria’s surprisingly new and surprisingly fast little Chevy coupe that she actually looked at him, the way only some of Stone’s female relatives could, and grinned. “Besides,” she said, out of nowhere, “If we’re out at Basil’s, nobody’s going to bother you about your little, ah, ‘accident’, now are they? You know the family doesn’t talk about such things in public, even if Basil spends so much time feeding us he’s practically family.”

Stone stared at her for a minute. “You’re rescuing me?” Or, at least, she thought she was rescuing him. “Why?”

“Well… let’s just say I have my reasons. Listen, young man. You were going to have the power whether or not you bit a rabbit. Heck, for all we know, Zenobia being who she was, she put that rabbit where it was just so that eventually you would bite it – but either way, Stone, you already had power.”

He looked out the window, shifting in the suddenly-uncomfortable seat. “I’m not supposed to.”

“Oh, the family has done many, many foolish things, but foremost among them is that ridiculous belief. You have power. You won’t be the Aunt, not with so many willing female candidates – and I’m sorry, but Beryl is just a stronger witch than you are – but that has never meant ‘without power’, any more than having children has meant it, or any other of a dozen things. It just means you aren’t the conduit of all the Family’s power.”

“You’re not upset?”

“Stone, dear, eventually I will tell you the story, how I learned how much malarkey and balderdash is involved in such family myths – but not today. Today, I imagine you don’t want anything to do with a batty old lady’s batty old theories.” She winked cheerfully at him.

He did not tell her to keep her eyes on the road, because Stone valued his life. But he did clutch to the armrest.

“Speaking of the power, that’s something to pay attention to. Notice the relatives to whom little inconveniences just don’t happen – and the ones who get more than their fair share. Notice the relatives who have too much good luck – there is such a thing, I promise you – and the ones who never seem to get a break.”

“So, like Jordan?” His younger cousin had never made any team, never been picked for anything, despite being a phenomenal athlete.

“Jordan is a lovely example, yes. When you get a chance to do so quietly – do you have a Tarot deck?”

“I have what Aunt Eva calls a cheater deck,” he admitted. He hadn’t even told his mother that.

“We ought to get you set up with a proper deck. We should have someone paint you one, I know a cousin of a cousin… but in the meantime, the cheater deck will do. Do a spread on Jordan, if you can — nearby but not in sight is best for this sort of thing.”

Stone took a moment to come up with a response. He stared out the window, watching the cows and the fields go by. “Aunt Rosaria… are you giving me homework?”

“It does sound that way, doesn’t it?” He couldn’t look at her right now, couldn’t, but her voice sounded amused.

“And you — you want to have someone paint me a real deck?” The family used hand-painted decks for almost all of their card divination, and painting the decks was a very specific skill — like Aunt Zenobia’s animals. Nobody else had made animals quite like hers, and most people didn’t try.

“Well, everyone knows you get better results with a hand-painted deck. You did know that, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, of course. It’s just…”

“I won’t ask Eva to teach you — even though we both know she’s already been doing just that. She needs to train the next Aunt, and a back-up — don’t look at me like that, nephew.”

Stone had whipped around at the word “back-up.” “Beryl…”

“Easy now, Stone, easy.” Rosaria patted his leg in a manner that was supposed to be soothing, he thought and, much to his surprise, actually settled him down.

The power didn’t reside just in the Aunts, he reminded himself.

“My sister,” he complained, still not as calm as he imagined she’d like him to be.

“Your sister is a nice smart girl who can take care of herself. But she might take herself right into a baby or a marriage if your mother or your aunts and uncles don’t stop pushing her, and you know that as well as I do. Or, heaven and the stars forbid, there might be an accident. We need back-ups, Stone, and Evangaline needs to teach them. It’s just reasonable.”

Stone sighed. “Reasonable,” he agreed. “I don’t have to like it.”

“Of course not. Liking things is never required. But it helps. Like training you.”

“Training me? What?” He stared at Rosaria, momentarily distracted from the theoretical threat to his sister’s wellbeing. “I’m a boy.”

“I hadn’t noticed, back when I changed your diapers, or what with that little weed of a beard you have coming in,” Rosaria answered dryly. “You’re a boy, yes. And I’m old enough and crotchety enough that nobody but Evangaline is going to naysay me on this. And do you think she will?”

Stone swallowed. “I — I don’t think so? Aunt Eva likes me, I think.”

“As well she should. There is nothing wrong with you, young Stone, and there is a good deal right with you. So I am going to train you. That is,” and here Aunt Rosaria actually looked uncertain for a moment, “if that is what you want?”

Stone held out his hand and thought about the power flowing through it. He had a lot of it, he knew, and not just because he’d bitten that rabbit. And sometimes, when he wasn’t paying attention, it bubbled out in strange ways. “My mom,” he said slowly, “she said I had to hide the power, or I would end up in trouble. That sometimes the family kicked out people who had the power but weren’t the Aunt, or sometimes they, um, they took the power away —”

“That,” Rosaria cut him off sharply, “is a disgusting ritual and one that has only been used once in all the history of our family. However,” she added, suddenly far more softly, “I would ask your sister — Beryl, that is — to borrow her necklace someday. Or her cat. There are worse things the family can do to you than kick you out or bind your power, and they have done them all at one point or another.”

Stone found his hands clenching into fists. “I don’t like the necklace. I haven’t, right from the beginning. Something is wrong about it. Something is… Off.”

“There is, indeed, but it can’t hurt your sister nor you. He can’t hurt anyone anymore, that’s why he’s a necklace. But think about some of your less pleasant relatives-”

“Which flavor?” Shit, he wasn’t supposed to say things like that in front of Aunt Rosaria. That was the “kids” hanging out gossiping sort of chat, not the kind of thing you said to your great-aunt. He stared out the car window, wondering why it was taking so long to go down a quiet country road.

She snorted. “Not nosy, not smelly, and, at the moment, not a faker. No, I’m talking about the ones who feel like everything you do is their business and their say-so.” Her hands were on the wheel and she was driving. They were even going a reasonable speed. And yet he was pretty sure he’d already seen that cow twice.

“I thought you said not nosy.” Stone focused on the part that he had a chance of understanding.

Rosaria indulged him. “There’s nosy like your Aunt Tasha, who wants to know who you’re kissing and why. Then there’s nose like your Aunt — no, she’s your cousin. Stephanie. Who thinks she ought to be telling you who to kiss. And why.”

Stone gave that a moment of consideration. “So, we’re talking about people who want to run my life. More so than the rest of the family.” Damnit, he was doing it again. What was it about Aunt Rosaria that turned him into an idiot?

“Exactly.” She turned and beamed at him. There was that same cow again. Still chewing on the same plot of grass, too. “So. Think about them. Now imagine them with the power to, for instance, create another necklace like your sister’s.”

Stone swallowed. “They would be shutting up everyone they didn’t agree with. And they never agree with anyone.”

“Exactly. Now, as I was saying. There are any number of awful things that can happen, but I am old and crotchety and you are young and strong, and we are not going to let them happen to you. Not this time.” She glared at him for a moment, but Stone recognized the look. Sometimes Beryl had a similar expression. It meant her anger had nothing to do with him.

Still, he swallowed. “Yes, Aunt Rosaria.”

She patted his leg one more time. “Now, then. I might have put this off longer, but you’ve gone and chewed on one of Zenobia’s trinkets, and that means I have to hurry a bit about the training. The heavens and the demons alone know what she got up to, and I don’t want something sprouting out of you at school or some such.”

Stone twitched. There were family stories of things like that happening, but they were all rumors of something that happened in another time, somewhere far away, to someone’s distant cousin. “I don’t — yeah, no. That would be horrid.”

“Your school is a little more in the pocket of the family than is probably a good idea, but still, yes. So I’m going to train you, and anyone who has a problem with it can bring those problems to my door. And I expect you to tell them that, young man, in that so-diplomatic way I know you’re so good at.”

“…Yes, Aunt Rosaria.” They were finally turning off the back-road and onto the main road into town. Stone let out a breath quietly.

“And since I’m teaching you—” Aunt Rosaria sounded far too pleased with herself and a little amused. Stone held his breath again. “Yes, I’m giving you homework. Your cousin Jordan. Start with the Tree spread and then, if that doesn’t tell you enough, move on to some of the more esoteric spreads. And then, for good measure, do the same for your sister. Not Beryl, Chalcedony. Got it?”

Stone stared at her. He wasn’t any less cornered, he realized — maybe more so, because Aunt Rosaria was a bit terrifying — but he wasn’t stuck, and he wasn’t being told he had to control himself, or his magic, or anything. “Yes, ma’am.”

Hopefully, he’d actually get his diner visit out of this, but if not, he supposed the look on people like Stephanie’s face when they realized Great-Aunt Rosaria was teaching him would be compensation enough for a missed lunch.

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January by the Numbers 27: Blustering Bishop: a ficlet.

Feb12

January by the numbers continues (We’re in February now but hey)

From sauergeek‘s prompt Bombastic bishop blusters, bristles: a ficlet.

The Bishop of Bettenhurst had gotten his position in the usual manner – or at least, the usual manner for the Church of St. Besri, especially the Bishopric of Bettenhurst. That is, the previous Bishop had met an untimely end, and the current one had been closest to his mitre when that happened.

Now, normally in such situations, there was a reasonable grieving and transition period before anyone started thinking about jockeying for the position or moving underlings out of the way. In Bishop Bodrick’s case, however, the man was so bombastic, so obnoxious, so full of bluster and impossible to talk to, that the attempts to remove him began almost immediately.

The problem was, it did no good to get rid of the man if you couldn’t be close enough to grab the mitre, and nobody was getting close enough to this guy to touch his headgear. Bishop Bodrick wasn’t only blustery, he was bristly, and he had a staff composed entirely of lay people (who could not become Bishop no matter how many times they grabbed the hat) and Order of Saint Koben monks, who had sworn to never hold any position of authority. He was crafty, unfortunately, and cagey, and a little bit prone to catastrophizing, and he met fellow priests in a long, narrow hall with a very wide desk between them.

But he was so bad. He would stand in front of the populace of Bettenhurst, chest puffed out, and pontificate on this and that and everything. He would make up new regulations, regulations not ratified by the Pontiff or even the Cardinal, and he would declare harsh punishments for anyone who disobeyed. Soon, the parishioners of Bettenhurst lived in fear of new regulations and dreaded going to hear the Bishop speak. But that, of course, was required.

Something had to be done. Someone had to stop him. They whispered and they moaned about it, complained and muttered and plotted, but nobody did anything. Something had to be done. Someone ought to stop him.

The day he ordered that nobody leave Bettenhurst except with his express permission should have been the last straw. The day that he declared the fourth day of every week a holiday to his name should have been the last straw. The day he stopped all classes for a week so that he could re-write the entire curriculum, and ordered the children to spend the time off writing paeans to his name — those should have been the final straw.

The day he ordered the execution of a baker for spitting in the wrong direction, however, someone finally moved.

Lots of people moved, to be fair, screaming in the streets, rioting, leaving the city — overwhelming the guards, who were feeling not entirely sanguine about the whole matter anyway — tearing down banners to Bishop Bodrick’s honor, singing angry songs.

One monk of Saint Koben moves aside all of the anger and screaming and rioting and quietly stole the Bishop’s mitre and his vestments, his ring and his sceptre. He drugged the Bishop’s food and left the man — in baker’s whites and no shoes, no hat — sitting on a park bench an hour before curfew.

The symbols and trappings of a Bishop were found on a quiet priest’s bed, while that priest, like many in the Bishopric, also dozed in a drugged stupor.

Bishop Pace had quite a bit of mess to clean up, and could anyone really dun him for not looking too hard for his predecessor?

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January by the Numbers 26: Deep Delving Dwarves: a ficlet.

Feb7

January by the numbers continues (We’re in February now but hey)

From sauergeek‘s prompt Deep delving dwarves discover dragons; discussions, disagreements develop: a ficlet.

The Dwarves of Daunaiya were not, as a rule, the deep-digging sort. They were, as a group, a little taller, a little less stocky than, say, their Northern Yudarsha cousins, and there were some who thought that they, not the nearby fae, were the cause of the “under-hill” myths. After all, the Daunaiya Dwarves dug under hills, not mountains, their tunnels following veins of silver and copper and lapis that wound under Darrenshire, the tallfolk land above Daunaiya.

Divisha cha-Doathshin was not born for the shallow digging. Some said it was in her blood — a grandfather from Yudarsha, a great-grandmother from Pellaye up in the Pellasher Mountains — some said she was just contrary, and some thought she was too proud for the team-based work of most dwarven mining.

But she was good, and when you are just that good at swinging your ax, just that good at sniffing out new veins, just that good at knowing exactly when to stop mining a seam, you are given some leeway. So when Divisha said she wanted to dig down, she encountered far less resistance — the political and social sort, at least — than another dwarf might have.

Down they dug, finding a vein they had not discovered before, down into metals only their ancestral records had words for, down into stones that glistened and shined like the sun itself, like grass after a rainfall, like lovers’ eyes. They were not deep-digging dwarves, and every hand-width down became that much harder, became that much more tempting, became that much more maddening.

They were twice as deep and half again as any Daunaiya dwarf had ever dug when Divisha suddenly called out “Stop!” And every single one of them know what that meant. Knew to hold onto their pick and hold their breaths the second she said it.

But there were diamonds and fesk-faturn glittering in young Dreniall’s eyes, and she swung her pick one more time.

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King for a Day, a commissioned continuation of the Aunt Family

Dec27

This is written to sauergeek‘s commissioned continuation of King(Maker) Cake, a story of the Aunt Family. There’s more to be told on this story, but this is where this piece wanted to end.

“Damnit,” Stone swore, and immediately wanted to swear again, because you didn’t use words like that in front of the family adults. “My…” He meant to say my tooth, but as he fished the piece of metal out of the muffin, he started to feel strange. “… ooooh.”

He realized everyone was looking at him, and his survival instincts, which appeared to have been taking a nap up to this point, finally kicked in. He looked at his nearest male cousin — Geoffrey, who had the advantage of being just about as phlegmatic as family men were supposed to be — and muttered, “tell ’em I went out for a walk if they ask. Picking walnuts or something?”

Geoffrey eyed the little gold rabbit in Stone’s hand and nodded. “Walnuts. They’re in the back,” he offered in a mutter.

Stone wanted to retort that he knew where the walnuts were, thank you, but it had been years since he’d run around his grandmother’s back yard picking walnuts or cherries or mulberries. It wasn’t so much that he grew up as his sisters had, and Stone found Grandma Ardella incredibly uncomfortable without Beryl or Chalce to act as a buffer.

And now he had to pick some walnuts. He slipped out the side door, the one they weren’t supposed to use, and made sure it was firmly closed behind him, and slipped down past a row of trees, so he couldn’t be seen from the house. He would go get walnuts, but first, he had to figure out what he’d just bitten.

The tiny figure was the size of one joint of his thumb, but the work on it was incredibly fine. He brought it up close to his face to really look at it — a rabbit, it looked like, on a curled leaf, its ears up. You could almost see its nose wiggle.

Stone turned it over. There, on the underside of the leaf, were two things: the world’s tiniest ladybug, cast in the same bronze as the rabbit, and an etched signature. Z, it said, in a wide florid letter.

Stone ran his tongue over his teeth. He hadn’t knocked anything loose, at least not anything in his mouth. What were they thinking, putting something this heavy in the cakes?

Considering the way his head was swimming, the more important question was what were they thinking, putting something this magical in the cakes?

The Z probably meant it was Aunt Zenobia’s charm. If it wasn’t — if it was some granny or some far-older Aunt or some cousin — Stone was a little worried, because at least Aunt Zenobia had lived in the Aunt House within creaky-but-living memory. Anyone else, any relative he couldn’t bring to mind, that could be tricky. The stars and the earth-core alone knew what it could do, if it was one of the really old Aunts.

Okay, Rabbit. Brass. He had to focus, because he had to figure out exactly what they were going to do when they found out. Aunt Zenobia — figure it had been Zenobia for now — had been working with animals, he knew that. Something with little glass figures like that stupid creepy play they’d read in English, the one with the metaphors held up like road signs.

Stone hadn’t pointed out to anyone, yet, how growing up in a family of witches meant that you paid close attention to the way things were said, or how that translated to his straight-A’s in English. It wasn’t that he thought his English teacher wouldn’t understand — it was that he was afraid Mr. Bonner would.

There were already enough rumours about his family going around. The last thing Stone needed was to make them worse by telling the one teacher who already seemed aware of what the world could really be like.

Rabbit. Brass. His tooth had stopped hurting. Stone ran his tongue over all his teeth, just in case he’d missed something. Nope, nothing hurting, nothing seemed like it was chipped or turned into a swan or anything.

But his head still felt like it was swimming. Right. Rabbits. Rabbits were all about, what, abundance? They’d done a unit on that in English class and poor Mr. Bonner hadn’t been able to stop blushing. Then again, when Ruth Decker kept glancing over at Stone, he’d been having a little trouble with the blushing, too.

Fertility, please, don’t let it be a fertility charm. He’d never hear the end of it. Sons might not be under the same pressure to marry that daughters were (Quick! before they became the Aunt!), but his mother wasn’t blind, and neither was Aunt Eva. They might try to push him into three-kids-before-nineteen just in hopes that it would kill the spark in him.

The spark, oh, no. Stone sat down on a nearby boulder and felt inside of him. He didn’t have cards or a scrying bowl or even a pen and paper out here, nothing to use as a focus.

The rabbit was warm in his hand. Stone fished a piece of leather thong out of his pocket and threaded it between the rabbit and the leaf. That let him dangle the little charm in front of him, where he could stare at it and feel for his magic.

The spark, the family called it. Boys weren’t supposed to have it, but Stone knew he wasn’t the only one. Social pressure might work that way, but genetics didn’t, not usually.

He took a deep breath. He didn’t want to do anything big, just, say, make the grass grow a little. It might be wintertime, but the snow had all melted a few days ago (the way it often did when the family needed to travel), and he could see the whole lawn spread out around him. A little bit of growth on the lawn would be small enough to escape notice. He didn’t want to call attention to what he was doing, after all, especially not here. Here, he risked get caught out by all the women in the house that wanted him to be snugly married and safely powerless. And as long as you didn’t get carried away, making the grass grow was one of the safer pieces of magic.

As long as you don’t get carried away might very well be Aunt Eva’s motto. He’d heard it at least once a visit since he started going over there with his sister and cousins.

He felt the life of the grass under him, felt the way it was all joined together, and called on it, just a spark, just a suggestion of power.

The spark seemed to catch a bit of tinder. It wooshed through him like a wildfire, wooshed out just as hot, just as fast, and every piece of grass in the lawn grew four inches.

“No, No.” Stone pushed at the grass, urging it with both hands, palms-down. Too much, too much The grass subsided, bright green, far too vibrant, but only maybe a quarter-inch longer than it had started out. “Phew.” He looked around the yard.

The daffodils were blooming. It was Christmas, and all the daffodils were in bloom.

He looked down at the rabbit. It looked like it was blooming a bit.

“Abundance, hunh,” he muttered. He could hear the front door opening. And the back door. And the side door.

And a window upstairs.

There was no hiding this. Stone put his face in his hands and waited for the storm.

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Sunrise, Sunset – a commissioned continuation for the Giraffe Call

Jul23


Written to sauergeek‘s commissioned continuation of “The Sun Comes Up from my Summer Giraffe Call.

Painting was not easy. The technical skill was relatively simple. Nina had been rendering elevations of potential buildings since she began working. She could display a leaf on the canvas. She could show you its veins and the way it curved.

That was not what Aspen did. Aspen made art. His paintings made feelings happen, deep in Nina’s gut. They showed movement and light and the way the air tasted, fresh by the reservoir, darker by the road.

She kept coming back, looking at his art, trying to imitate it, failing and trying again. Frustration filled her. She crumpled up drawings and tossed them away, only to recover them to feel the sensation over again. Sometimes, she felt anger rising up inside her, and if nobody else was in their little corner of the park, she would shout, letting it out in a way that felt too loud, too bright.

Aspen seemed to understand. “I started studying painting because our substations were ugly,” he told her, one day when she had flopped on the ground in frustration and helplessness. “Nobody could understand it, but people were coming to the parks less and less. People need fresh air. People need to spend time around other people, and time alone.” He’d gestured at the building, which had been painted to blend into the landscape, the foliage and the detailing technically perfect. “So I sat out here, making sure that it was working, that people were visiting without being repulsed. The more I sat here, the more I wanted to paint things. The more things I painted, the more I wanted to make them interesting. The more I tried… well. One night, I realized I’d been dreaming.”

Dreaming. She’d heard of it — whispers, from people with names instead of numbers, from people who did not approve of people with names. Dreaming made your brain tell you lies. It made your mornings uncertain, these stories that did not exist fluttering through your mind. It made you unreliable. “I do not dream,” she informed Aspen.

His brush moved over his canvas. After a few minutes — he was painting leaves again, autumn leaves although it was still springtime outside — he smiled at her. “You will. And when you do, then you will bring color to your paintings.”

He patted Nina’s knee. It was the first time she could remember anyone touching her casually. “In the meantime, the anger is a good start.”

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Superfood – a story of Space/Colony for the Summer Giraffe Call Round 2

Jul7


Written to sauergeek‘ prompt here to my Summer Giraffe Call Round 2

Names from – http://www.scifiideas.com/alien-species-generator/

“All right, the last plant is ready for the colony ship.” Gioia macDowell stepped back and wiped the sweat from her brow while her boss waited — patiently of course; the Detzuborg were always patient — for her to continue. “It’s gluten-free, it’s vegan, it’s umami, it’s got a decent healthy fats content, low cholesterol, not too high in fructose, decent in fiber and with the best protein content I could manage.”

“You made a superfood?” Zenaford’s voice raised mildly. “That is beyond the scope of the brief.”

“Considering the terrain on Zooik Four, I thought the colonists would need all the help they can get. Besides,” macDowell smirked at herself, “I’m a perfectionist. This thing will grow on Zooik-four soil, and it will take in nutrients even from Zooik Four plants, although it would be helped by having some basic modified grass or wheat planted near it.”

“Take in nutrients from…” Zenaford took a step forward. “What, exactly, did you do, Dr. MacDowell?”

“Here, I think you’d best see it.” She raised the view screen to show her Zooik-Four-contained environment.

Inside the hardened glass, a small, green sheep grazed contentedly at the end of a long stalk-like tether. Its wool looked like something like broccoli, its leaves rather like horseradish. “It’s a derivation of the Brassicaceae family, of course. Everything good is — well, that or nightshades, and they’re too tender.”

“…You made a carnivorous plant to feed the colonists?”

“Technically,” macDowell couldn’t help but offer, “I made an herbivorous plant.”

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Fire after Fire – a story for my Summer Giraffe Call

Jun27

Written to sauergeek‘s prompt here to my Summer Giraffe Call.

“How long do you think it originally took mankind to discover fire?”

“Shut up, Danijel.”

“Because I’m thinking you’re looking at running longer than primitive men living in a cave.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, Danijel, we are living in a cave. Besides, the whole ‘cave man’ thing was a myth. Made for pretty cartoons, that’s all.”

“You know, considering a forest fire sent us this way…”

“Technically, it wasn’t the forest fire.” Matija looked up from her patient work with flint and steel — or what she had in lieu of that, which was hopefully-flint and a nail. “It was the botched suppression fire. Who let those idiots anywhere near an active blaze, I don’t know.” She leaned down and blew carefully on the tinder. “And if you don’t blow it out again, I’ve got something like a fire. It won’t do very well as a signal, unless it brings an overzealous volunteer fire-fighter down on us…”

“But it’ll cook s’mores.” Danijel sat down, watching the fire carefully. “And, I suppose, boil water.” At Matija’s raised eyebrow, he squirmed. “What? We were heading on a hike. I brought supplies. Besides… you never know when you’re going to get rained on and stuck in camp for a week.”

The look Matija gave him clearly indicated what she thought of that. “You were hoping we’d be out for a couple days.”

“Well, not quite… yeah.” Danijel looked down at his backpack. “It’s a very nice fire?”

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The Rescue of Junie, for “Finish It” Bingo and several requests.

May25

Never Try to Steal a Dweomer
Backpack Gremlins (LJ)
Hunting Junie I (LJ)
Hunting Junie II (LJ)
Hunting Junie III (LJ)
Red Covers (LJ)
Bounty (LJ)
Team D (LJ)
Victimization (LJ)

This runs to 3800 words.

There was a man – a human man, a bog-standard boring kidnapping human, normal and plain as they came – picking up an unconscious dweomer child, and Kelkathian and Azdekious were doing nothing at all to stop him.

Indeed, they were riding along, Az tucked inside Junie’s backpack and Kel riding in her front shorts pocket.

There was another human – even more boring and standard than the first, including the fact that this one didn’t even have a shred of common sense – swearing at the first human, but the first one was doing his best to ignore him.

There had been a number of scenarios in Kel and Az’s planbook that ended like this, but none of them had been this positive.

The only problem was, as Kel saw it, that this human might not be a match for the first three teams of creeps that were after Junie, and he was, at the moment, their biggest, best defense for her.

Well, that and he’d been fine with the whole kidnapping idea, up until he found out that the kidnap victim just happened to be from Smokey Knoll. Kel couldn’t argue with the guy’s self-preservation instincts, but one had to question his moral choices.

“Hey! Tall person!” He might not be able to see gremlins. There were definitely humans who seemed to have an issue with their vision, especially when it came to the Small and Smaller Races. But if he could…

The man swallowed and stopped dead. “I am trying to take this child back to her family. I am going to take her back to the bus stop where she was grabbed—”

“Yeah, yeah, you said that already. Down here, human.” Kel waved. “I’m not big but your eyesight can’t be that bad.”

He squinted, sucked in breath, and stumbled. Kel noted that, though he nearly fell down, he never lost his grip on Junie. “Shit. Shit, look, I swear I didn’t know. Donnie, that idiot —”

“How was I supposed to know?” Donnie shouted from somewhere under the roof-lining of the van. “And who are you talking to?”

The human coughed. “Uh. One of the girl’s protectors. Good luck, Donnie.”

“Smart man.” Kel peered up at him. “So. You have a problem.”

“I, uh, I noticed that, yeah. I’m trying to fix that.” He was turning red. Kel always found it fascinating how humans did that.

“Not us. Not even her parents. Or the dragons that are her friends. Or her harpy babysitters. Those are problems. You have a more immediate issue.”

“…are you wearing mirrorshades?”

“Yep. Bodyguard duty.”

The man barely suppressed a snicker. “Right. Sorry. What’s the bigger problem than the dragons?”

“You’re team D. Which means teams A through C — which know what she is — are gunning for you now.”

“…oh.” Kel wasn’t entirely sure about human coloration, but suddenly-pale didn’t seem like a good sign. “Oh. Are, uh. Are these ‘teams’, are they, that is, um. Human?”

“Well.” Kel ticked them off on fingers. “The mirrorshades, we’re pretty sure they’re human. Team A. Team C, that’s a hunter. Could be human, could be a dweomer. Betting on human, though, or he’d have twigged what we were doin’ to him quicker. That leaves team B.” Kel shuddered melodramatically. “We’re not sure about him. But I’d stay away from any sweet old men if I were you.”

The human had regained some of his color. He looked down at Kel and twisted his lips up. “Look. I might be human, but one of the things I know about places like Smokey Knoll is that you avoid anything that looks sweet, or innocent, or innocuous. Like her.” He nodded at the unconscious girl in his arms. “So. I’ve got to get her to the bus stop and I’ve got to keep her away from several other creeps. I’ve got to avoid being eaten by any bodyguards who might not understand why I’m there. And I’ve got to do this all while knowing her parents might still kill me.”

Kel nodded sharply. “That’s about it.”

“Remind me to go into a better line of work if I survive this.”

This guy was starting to grow on Kel. “Good idea.”

———

Chelsea had been swearing for ten straight minutes. Ryan had been checking their equipment — still dead, of course — their visuals — still blank of anything except two very annoyed harpies — and, lacking anything else, his own pulse — still running high, but that was to be expected with Chelsea swearing up a storm and their target simply gone.

He wasn’t going to ask if she had magic that let her do that. Not yet. It might go on the list eventually — like Chelsea had said, they were into the “red covers” now, which apparently meant off the map and into the “here be dragons” part.

Ryan’s gran had warned him about those parts of the map — in Gran’s place, she’d been being literal. “Don’t go to Seventh Street, that’s where the witches live.” “There’s dragons down in the subways, so always take some rue and some comfrey with you when you take the Metro.” It had turned out that the witches on Seventh weren’t remotely human — elkin, they called themselves, but they were anomalous individuals to the home office and, living down in the numbered streets, hadn’t managed legal representation to challenge the label. The dragons in the sewer were a non-sentient — according to home office, who hadn’t had to cage them — being that was not, technically speaking, a dragon, but you couldn’t fault Gran for the assessment.

After the dragon-things, Ryan had started writing down everything he could remember of his Gran’s cautionary tales.

In code. In a locked notebook. That was locked in a hidden case. The home office —

Well, if Chelsea was talking about the Red Covers, maybe the home office was more understanding about folk tales than he’d thought.

They would not, however, be understanding about missing the target another time. Ryan sighed and checked the visuals one more time.

“Chelsea? Chels. Ma’am. You’ve got to see this.”

———
Orin was in something a few steps beyond a foul mood. He had been dive-bombed by harpy chicks, stabbed by pixies, and farted on by a centaur foal, and all that in the half an hour he had taken trying to leave the neighborhood nearest Smokey Knoll.

The nonhumans didn’t usually let their children out of the village without an adult escort, but Orin had a feeling what was going on. He’d already been suspecting gremlins when his equipment started failing… and gremlins probably counted as adult supervision when your kid had wings or hooves.

Orin looked at the thing in front of him now. He didn’t like using words like thing; get to thinking about your prey as non-people and you forget they thought like people — more or less. But this… well, it was outside his vocabulary of monsters. And if this was the juvenile, he really had to get out of the area before the adult showed up.

He held up both hands and spoke carefully and clearly. “I’m leaving. I’m just trying to get to West Ave. Leaving Smokey Knoll.”

The thing growled deep in its throat. It was asymmetrical! Living beings just weren’t. Was it wrong? Like, sick or damaged somehow?

It didn’t matter. It was moving towards Orin threateningly. He didn’t dare attack it if it was a juvenile. He didn’t dare let it attack him. Orin repeated himself. “I’m just trying to leave.”

The thing cut off in mid-growl. It turned, facing more or less where Orin had been trying to go, and snorted.

“Well, shit,” Orin muttered, as the thing lumbered off down his escape route.

~~~

“Well.” Kel shifted position on Junie’s backpack strap. “I see the mirrorshades and the creepshow, but not the … oooh.” The echoing bellow of an upset juvenile troll cut through the air. “I wonder what got Little Junior upset. Well, he’s harmless to … uh. Me and Az, and Junie. He loves Junie.”

The human coughed. “Junie?” He looked down at the girl and the gremlin he was carrying. “Is this…”

“Yeah. The darling of large parts of Smokey Knoll. Relax, relax,” Kel scolded. “You didn’t know, and Az and I are gonna do our best to keep you alive.”

“Toads are alive,” he muttered. Kel snorted.

“Nobody in Smokey Knoll would turn you into a toad. Well… nobody you’re going to run into in this situation. Hrrm. You see the people in the expensive sedan looking upset?” Kel gestured, because even with binoculars, nobody would see a gremlin gesture at 200 feet.

The human had to be more surreptitious, but he was. “Yep. Those your team A?”

“Yeah. I think they’re working for one of the big paramilitary groups. And Junie might not be powerful now… but she’s still a little-thing and they like to get them little and…”

The human swallowed. “Yeah. I get it. Creepy bastards with back up.”

“On the plus side, they have no functioning tech more impressive than a stick and, if I really wanted to, I could make their sticks stop working.” Kel grinned. “Az and me are good.”

“Remind me not to piss you two off… again.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’ll need any reminding if you get out of this. Of course, we fried the kid’s cell phone, too. That was a mistake.”

“Oh, good to know I’m not the only one who screwed up.” He made a face. “What’s this creepshow?”

“You see that old man there? The bird-watcher with the binoculars and the breadcrumbs?”

“Him? I’ve seen him all over town.”

“Yeah, well, normal kids work too, it’s just the fancy ones like Junie are a delicacy.”

“Are a…” He swallowed. “Right. Anyone notice if I put a bullet through his brain?”

“Probably your authorities. Unless we vanished the body… but we try not to do that too much. Has consequences.”

“I do not want to know how gremlins vanish bodies,” he muttered. “Okay, so I have to get past the sedan and the… shit, I think the sedan saw me.” The two in mirrorshades were getting out of their useless car and heading their way. “This is going to get messy.”

Privately, Kel was inclined to agree with him. “Az!” Gremlins had very good hearing, when they wanted to. “Trouble!”

“What are they going to do, hit him with sticks?” Az’s return hiss was almost a cackle. “They’ve got nothing.”

“They’ve got two big folk to our one big folk, one unconscious child, and us. That’s not good odds, Az. And the creep is still over there.”

As if he’d heard Kel, the creep looked up, binoculars pointed straight at Junie. Kel swore. “We could really use the cavalry.”

~

A repeating bellow was echoing over Smokey Knoll. Ryan’s field book said it was probably a juvenile troll.

He didn’t know whether to be more worried about that or the man in Very Ordinary Clothes carrying their target — their unconscious — target directly into the probable path of the juvenile troll.

Then again, there was the dark cloud growing over Smokey Knoll. That looked really worrisome, too.

At the moment, however, Ryan’s attention was utterly and completely held by the petite flying person aiming a small spear at his nose. Her — he was assuming her, and let Chelsea ream him out later — voice was a chipper, happy squeak that he could barely hear.

“I’m looking for my friend! She’s… she’s a tallfolk, but short for tallfolk, and she’s got brownlike hair and she went missing about when you showed up.” The thing had pink hair and, more importantly for Ryan right now, the tip of the spear was pink. Glistening, sickly-sweet pink.

Ryan swallowed very carefully. If he breathed heavily, he might be able to blow her away. Then again, if he breathed too heavily, she might jab that pink spear at his nose, and Ryan didn’t know what that would do.

He made a mental note to look up pixie weapons later. If he was a very small creature with a very large temper — which this thing apparently had, even if their species as a whole did not — he would be carrying the deadliest poisons he could get his tiny hands on, or maybe neurotoxins, paralytics, acids… the list went on, none of which he wanted poking into his face.

“If you will look to my left,” he said, very carefully and very slowly, “you might see a tallfolk, ah, a human—” probably “—carrying the young lady that is probably the one you are looking for.”

The pixie flew even closer to him. She was holding the spear with a great deal of professional skill, for all that she could fit in his cupped hands. Ryan held very, very still.

With a whoop that threatened to break glass, she darted away. “Junie! Junie, Junie what are you doing to her?”

The cloud was getting closer. Ryan glanced at Chelsea. “Walk to a safe bus stop, send a tow for the car tomorrow?”

“We can’t just…” She frowned and looked at the cloud. “Yes. Walk fast, Junior. If you want to live to go on another mission.”

Ryan glanced up the hill into Smokey Knoll. He swallowed once, and turned around and started walking — quickly — before he snapped out a “yes, ma’am.”

Chelsea was shorter than him. He made sure she didn’t fall behind.

~

Kel whooped happily as the mirrorshades ran off. “That’s two down! Now all we have left is… oh.”

“Yeah, oh. That doesn’t look good.” The cloud on the horizon had settled itself into the shape of millions of insects — or very angry pixies — swarming towards the bus stop. “I don’t suppose they’re here to eat the last of your baddies, are they?”

“They’re no more my baddies than they are — uh. Kid’s waking up. Be very careful, mister, and whatever you do, no sudden moves.”

“She’s…” he stopped whatever he was going to say. “Right. Uh. Pink things.”

“Pink… oh.” Flying towards them was a small team of angry pixies. “Same goes for them only twice.” Kel stood up as tall as possible on the backpack strap and waved both arms wildly. “Same team, same team!” For once, the gremlin wished to be larger. “Same team.”

“Same team,” the human echoed. “Easy, easy, I’m on your side. I am..” he swallowed as one of the little pink pixies — taller than a gremlin, sure, but delicate and flighty and ethereal, everything gremlins really weren’t — the little thing hoovered in the air near his nose. “I am taking Junie to her family. Can you contact her family? She is unconscious and she is in danger.”

“He’s on our side,” Kel confirmed. The pixy barely glanced down, but that wasn’t surprising. Its spear pulled back a little bit; it had heard. “Junie’s been drugged, and I don’t know what will happen when she wakes up — which is going to be soon. What happened to the harpy team? Haven’t seen them around.”

“They were on Teams A and B for a bit, but they started getting sick. Medula fell out of the air.” The pixie tittered. Pixies were not known for their empathy. “So they had to head off. Something’s drugged them or something.” It was still looking directly at the human. “The others have been doing what they can, but there’s a lot of funny-headedness going around. Anything bigger than us isn’t happy.”

Kel’s gaze was pulled towards the dark cloud of bugs. “Yeah. That’s some really nasty mojo going on. And Junie…”

“I think she’s waking up.” The human shifted uncomfortably. “Should I set her down?”

At some point, this guy was going to figure out that Kel and Az were using him as legs. “No, no. Not until her eyes are open and she’s making words. Any word on the cavalry?” Where was everyone?”

“Green team couldn’t get any answer. And brown team couldn’t make their selves understood.” The pixie clucked in frustration. “This wouldn’t happen if…”

“Shht, shhht,” Kel hissed. “And if the sky were pink what would the flowers look like? We’ve got what we’ve got and that’s that.”

“Well, what we’ve got is this… guy. This guy-thing doing this.” The pixy gestured backwards angrily at the cloud of bugs coming closer and closer.

“Wait.” The human crouched down carefully. “I’ve got an idea.” He looked up at the pixy. “You should go find an adult person big enough to carry Junie and legally or morally responsible for her. Parent, parent-of-blessings, whatever. Someone that can get her home. And you should go now.”

Kel frowned at the human. Blessings-parent? Most of the experience the gremlins had with humans was in annoying their technology, but didn’t they normally say godparent? Blessings-parents, that was… well, it was a centaur word, as far as Kel knew.

Also, what was he up to?

The pixy was frowning, too — glaring, really. “What are you to tell me what to do?”

“Look, if I do this right, it’s doing to disrupt all magic in a small radius. If there’s any magic in your flight….”

“Right, looking for Junie’s family or the Smiths.” The pixy took off in a flutter of wings.

“”Right. So, I’m going to need you and your partner to distract any humans with tech, and keep Junie calm if you can. This is gonna take — well, hopefully not too long.” From his pockets, the human pulled a few things. Kel recognized a packet of salt, a candle stub, a small bamboo fan. “Don’t suppose there’s water in her bag?”

“Az,” Kel hissed. A moment later, the shorter gremlin emerged, hauling a short bottle of water — short for a human’s hand, at least. Az was wrapped around it like a cozy.

“Thank you.” He scattered the salt in a circle and, much to Kel’s surprise, added pepper. Then he put the water bottle to one side of him and the candle to the other. A flick of a bic lighter and the candle was burning. Three pebbles went directly behind him.

“What are you doing, human?” Kel wanted to jump up and down. “We should be running.”

“I can’t outrun that, not carrying her and maybe not on my own. You and your partner are welcome to try if you want, but leave now.”

Kel frowned. “No. She’s our responsibility.”

“And because of my partner’s idiocy, she’s my responsibility, too. So let me work.”

Kel looked at the cloud. It would be on them soon. “Right.”

The human began muttering things under his breath. Some of it was Latin, Kel thought. Parts sounded like Low Ogre or Simplified Dragon. One part sounded like High Troll.

Kel watched him. The power was crackling off of him, crackling, sparking, rising, and… connecting. Slowly, far too slowly for Kel’s comfort, the lines of power began to touch the salt and fuse to it.

The bug-cloud was close enough that they could hear it, a steady, malevolent buzz. The power weaving into the salt formed a ring and began lifting up, surrounding them. The buzzing grew closer, setting Kel’s jaw on edge.

“Hey!” The policeman seemed to notice them before he noticed the bugs. Or maybe he thought the human was making the bug cloud. “You can’t…”

Belts were hard, but they counted as technology. Kel fried his with a sharp glance and a moment of hard concentration that caught his radio and his cell phone in the blast.

The cloud was resolving into millions of individual bugs. Not bugs, bees, and wasps and hornets. Kel dove into the bag, head out in case the policeman wasn’t deterred.

The human shouted a final word — it had to be Latin, Kel was pretty sure — and the sparkling ring of light closed in a dome over their heads. He sagged a little, just as Junie opened her eyes.

“What… hey!”

Kel was still holding a tight breath. Those bees… they could easily kill a gremlin. That many bees, they could easily kill a small human, maybe a large one. The cloud of bugs was heading straight for them.

“Hey, hey, let me go.” Junie was wriggling violently in the human’s arms now. Kel tensed. She had a habit of getting… explosive… when she got too stressed, and then passing out and forgetting the whole thing. It was a third of why the gremlins had been assigned to watch her; nothing fazed a gremlin.

But right now exploding could hurt Junie badly. Kel couldn’t look away from the bees. There was this thin line of salt between the threat and them. there was… Kel took a breath. “Junie, honey. This human is a friend. He’s taking you back to your parents.”

“Let me go… Kelkathian? Azdekious?” Junie’s voice went quiet. “That’s a lot of bugs.”

The bugs hit the edge of the salt line and broke over the shield, hitting it like a windshield, scattering around it, flying over it. For a moment, their little group was surrounded on all sides by stinging insects… but none came inside the shield.

The human let out a breath. “Hi,” he said ruefully to Junie. “I’m the cavalry.”

Around them, half of the bugs vanished. A third of them fell to the ground, confused or stunned. The rest of them flew off aimlessly. Whatever magic had been guiding or summoning them had been broken.

Kel sniffed the air. The distinctive sulfur smell that always heralded a Junie-attack was slowly dissipating. But… Kel studied Junie. There had been no attack.

A flap of dragon wings and a dragon-trumpet announced that one of the Smiths would soon be here — Cxaidin, from the sound of it. Kel looked up at the… at the would-be kidnapper. “You…” Kel took a breath. “You’re not a human.”

The… the would-be kidnapper… smirked. He looked, Kel thought, justifiably tired. “You’re the only one who said I was.”

“But…” Kel flapped hands at the place they sat, between Smokey Knoll and the human world. Junie peered at her, looking mostly perplexed and a little lost.

The not-a-human shrugged, still smiling. “Some of us find places like Smokey Knoll, I guess. Some of us aren’t so lucky.” Deliberately, he leaned to one side and broke the salt circle. “The dragon’s your friend, right?”

Kel felt as stunned as the bees on the ground still looked. “Uh… yeah. Cxaidin Smith. Junie’s god-father.”

“Safe travels, gremlins. Junie.” He helped the girl to her feet with a gentle thump. “Thanks for giving me a chance.”

Cxaidin landed with a dragon-snort, eating all of Kel’s attention for a moment. By the time the gremlin turned around, the not-human was gone.

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The Water

Jan8

To sauergeek‘s prompt. Modern era, unknown setting.

The people of Greenville had been pleased to finally get a proper water processing plant. The wells had been producing sporadically for decades now, and the Crooked Lake, while beautiful, was too often green and not the tastiest water by far.

The company that installed it came in shiny trucks and cars with cleansuits and many instruments. “Looks like an alien invasion:” Bernie McDonald wasn’t the first to say it, but he was the loudest.

“Or some sort of government takeover. Men in black.” Gennie Simmons was far quieter than her cousin, but when she spoke, people listened.

“Nonsense, Gennie, they’re in white,” scoffed Bernie. But he, loud as he was, and she, in her retiring way, kept an eye on the workers and the cars, the machinery and and intake tubes, the chemicals and the filters. They were retired, decades past retirement, actually, like half the town. They had time to spy, and they spied thoroughly.

The problem in all that spying was, it wasn’t something the water plant people were putting in that was the problem. It was what they were taking out.

Want more?

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