Archive | August 28, 2011

Redo/furniture/question

Aug28

Okay!

This blog has motivated me, and I am going to, sometime probably-this-winter, redo our old dresser (a hand-me-down from when I was a kid.)

It needs new feets, need knobs (doesn’t NEED those) and, I think, a two-tone effect to go with the bedroom-that-will-be.

My big issue: right now there is a bookshelf atop it. This shelf was made by Fatherman and I, but it needs to be re-re-done at this point into something more fitting. I’m thinking re-building it, with a back, into a basic bookcase the same size as the top of the dresser…

…then painting everything offwhite with darkbrown trim.

Yes, because gutting a house wasn’t a big enough project.

Fun link for bonus – http://www.slashgear.com/cave-the-bookcase-with-built-in-seat-094690/ A “cave” bookcase with built in seat!

And some really funky bookcases (some, clearly, for people who do not have books the way we have books).

dresser & shelf

>dresser

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/121024.html. You can comment here or there.

Belated rescue

Aug28

This is to Dulcinbradbury‘s commissioned prompt “A rescue that happens long after the physical need for it has passed. (But it’s just as necessary all the same.)”

Author’s note: This is set in Addergoole, my webserial, which in turn is set in my Fae Apoc setting (Landing Page (LJ Link)) – the Year 8/9 stuff happens several years after the serial’s main timeline.

In this setting, a twist of magic allows people to Own (“Keep”) other people in a mind-control manner, which often is imposed on new students via trickery their first year. Also, Dyfri is a merman of sorts.

Dyfri hadn’t been able to help Evie last year. He’d done everything he could to get to her first, but Calvin had grabbed her, Owned her, and that was, as they say, all she wrote. Calvin being what he was, she’d soon been forbidden to talk to him at all, and he’d stayed away so as to not make life harder on her. He couldn’t, he knew, take Calvin on in a flat-out challenge. He’d struggled with a way to make it happen, but the bigger boy wasn’t stupid enough to come into the water, where the bias in the fight would have swung the other way. So he waited, and swore a lot, and plotted.

Calvin, like most Keepers in Addergoole, wouldn’t hold on to a girl more than a year. The teachers got really unhappy about it, and so did the other students. So on the last day of classes, Dyfri waited, and was there when the asshat kicked Evie out of his room with two garbage bags of stuff.

“Let me help you carry that?” he asked, as gently as he could.

“Go away, Dy,” she answered tiredly. “I don’t need this.”

“Just a bag, Evie,” he countered, and, raw from the crying she’d obviously been doing, she agreed.

A bag, that day. Dinner the next week. He treated her like a feral animal, plying her carefully with simple, innocuous things: food. A walk out in the Village. A sarong his mother had, inexplicably, sent from Hawaii. Every time, she’d tell him to go away. Every time, he’d coax her into one small thing.

It took half the summer for her to invite him into her room, cautiously, an invitation laden with assurances that he wouldn’t touch her without her permission, wouldn’t hurt her, wouldn’t work magic on her. The door had just closed when she turned on him, pounding her fists against his chest.

“You didn’t stop him. You just stood there. Just let him take me. Just let him…” Her words broken down into sobs as Dyfri took the punches and the accusations, knowing he deserved them all. “You…” another sob, and then, in a tiny voice they would both, later, pretend she hadn’t used, “hold me?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/120691.html. You can comment here or there.

Puppies, continued, for Lilfluff

Aug28

I swear I posted the second half of this…

This is from @[personal profile] inventrix‘s prompt “finding out you have the wrong key,” and [personal profile] lilfluff‘s commissioned request for a continuation.

It had been a very clever idea.

Davyn stared at the cage door. It had been a decently clever idea, he supposed. His parents took the damn dog along everywhere, and left him at home with the nanny. Nevermind that sixteen was too old to need a nanny. Never mind that, unlike the dog, he’d never peed on the furniture or broken a priceless vase (just the one. The dog had broken three).

It had seemed like a clever idea. They threw a blanket over the dog kennel anyway, because the stupid thing was high-strung. This way, he could ride along, wherever it was they were going, and then show up at the end and get to have all the fun. It had seemed like a brilliant idea.

It had even worked. He’d locked himself in and curled up for a nice nap, comfortable by now with the sounds of animals all around (it wasn’t like the dog was even their only dog, just the one that got to come with them. He, on the other hand, was their only son). But they’d taken the kennel somewhere and gone off without a word, and here he was waiting for them to look for their precious dog and discover their son instead…

…It had been a pretty dumb idea. Since the key he was holding would have, he was pretty sure, opened the other kennel. The fancy one they used for road trips. Not this one, not the one he was locked in. Trapped in, that was the word.

“Help!” he called, feeling pretty stupid. His knees had cramped up, and his stomach was complaining. It had been a really long trip. “Help!”

“What the… ooh.” A pretty girl lifted the blanket and looked at him, smiling cheerfully. “Stuck, are you?” Her accent lilted in a way he’d never heard before, and she was really, really pretty. Stunning, really, and here he was…

“Yeah,” he admitted, more embarrassed than he’d ever been in her life. “Just a bit.”

“Locked in, is it? Well, then…” She dropped the blanket back over the kennel. “There’s a handcart around here somewhere…”

“Wait, what?”

“Hush, puppy,” she scolded, as the kennel tilted backwards precariously. “Good puppies don’t bark.”

—

Davyn skidded backwards in the kennel, yelping, startled. “What?” he repeated. “I’m not a puppy, I’m a boy.”

“Mm, if you don’t hush, I’m going to do something unpleasant. Now stay quiet, dear, and this will go easier.” He couldn’t see anything except the inside of his kennel, but it felt like she’d gotten the damn thing tilted back onto the handcart and started rolling it.

“Help!” he bayed, panic making his voice squeak. “Someone help me! Someone… ow ow owwww…” He lost his voice in a yowl of misery, as, inexplicably, his body lit up in jabbing pain.

“I warned you,” came the girl’s voice. “Good puppies are quiet. Now shush for me.”

He swallowed a whimper, curling as tightly as he could in the bottom of the cage. Pain wasn’t supposed to come out of nowhere. His brilliant plan was supposed to have worked.

It hadn’t been all that bad of a plan, anyway, if only he’d remembered the keys. He sighed softly and tried to get comfortable as the pain faded. What was going to happen to him now?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/120532.html. You can comment here or there.