Out of town for the weekend; I’ll try to get a prompt done a day and back to lots-of-writing when I return Sunday night!
DreamWidth – call for prompts here
LiveJournal – call for prompts here
(If you only did one or two prompts, feel free to go back and add a second/third đ
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/154931.html. You can comment here or there.
For YsabetWordsmith‘s prompt.
After Staying in the City (LJ) – from last month’s Giraffe Call.
Commenters: 6
Warning: potential squick – referenced mind/body control
The bugs had a problem.
Paula knew, now, that they werenât bugs, but the word they used for themselves, Tillalillathianin, twisted strangely in the human part of her brain, so in the parts that were still hers, she still thought of them as âbugs.â Her symbiote didnât seem to object.
Symbiote. She was still getting used to the feeling of it, to the double-senses inside her and the loss of control of what still seemed like her own body⌠mostly. She was still getting used to the additions the symbiote had brought, and the echo of its feelings against hers. They all were, symbiotes and hosts, the bonded and those who were still Just Bugs.
But that wasnât the problem â not quite, at least. The problem was, it seemed, that the Tillalillathianinâs home planet â not their home planet, really, but the one they had conquered the longest ago within their memory; when you asked a bug or a symbiote âwhat happened to your real home planet?â you got an hour-long headache and no good answers â well, anyway. Either none of the planets the Tillalillathianin had conquered before had an otherworld, or they had never before merged with a race that could see them.
This was causing them some issues, more because the bugs-proper could still not sense the other-beings, the fae and the restless undead and the monsters-under-bed sort of creatures, but those that had been bonded could, and it was freaking out the symbiotes. They kept giving up control of their human hosts every time they saw a ghost, which was, if disorienting, rather entertaining for both ghosts and hosts, and upsetting for the bugs-proper.
The fairies had already figured it out; Paula had a host of the tiny pixies following her around now. The ghosts were beginning to get it, and somebody, sheâd been told, had sent the monsters a message.
The spooks were going to spook out the bugs. In the growing part of her brain that was still hers, Paula found this very pleasing indeed.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/154662.html. You can comment here or there.
Faerie Apoc, Addergoole Year 9 – landing page here (or on LJ)
Commenters: 4
Hell Night, Year 9 of the Addergoole School
âHey, pretty, pretty, whatcha doing out all alone?â The man against the wall â âman,â because she still hadnât come up with words that fit for the weird creatures sheâd found herself in school with â smirked unkindly at her, and waved his hand at the ground, causing it to buckle and warp under her feet. Ceinwen gritted her teeth and kept walking, trying not to show any fear. It was like getting off at the wrong bus stop â although the people in the numbered streets had been humans, and this guy with the yellowish wood-grain-looking skin and the hair like pine needles didnât really seem to qualify.
What was she doing out all alone, indeed. Sheâd lost Ahouva right away â Kendon had grabbed her, told her he had something special for her, and off theyâd gone. Jovanna and Ăolind had gotten separated in a corner of the hall that had gone all black and inky, and turned Ceinwen and Kay around into a corridor theyâd never seen before.
Kay had, as far as Ceinwen could tell, run off through a brick wall. She was still trying to figure out how that had worked, but right now, what she knew was that it left her alone, with creepy yellow guys taunting her, and the hall slowly filling with water.
Water? That was a new one. The stuff around her toes looked like brackish water, though, and it felt like the carpet was water-logged, although it was hard to see it through the greenish liquid. The call-it-water was rising, too, lapping around her ankles. Ceinwen hurried on, trying to get away from wood-boy without looking like she was trying to get away.
âCome on, honey. You donât want to go swimming, come play with me instead.â He held out a branch â hand, it was a hand â to her, even leaned off the wall like he was going to walk her way. âI can be a lot of fun.â
âNo, thanks,â she answered â no need to be rude, itâs possible he was just being friendly, friendly in a creepy way â just as her foot slipped down, down, down, pulling her underwater.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/154523.html. You can comment here or there.
Reiassan. Reisassn has a landing page – here (or on LJ)
Probably after Bed-Warmer (LJ) but maybe after after Enemy, in which case the first paragraph will have to change.
Commenters: 5
Rin had gone, over the week after they left Ossulund, from whistling to thoughtful, with glances at Girey he was pretty sure she didnât think he noticed. That suited him; he had his own thoughts to ponder.
Sarella, the pretty little blonde who had more than a little cause to remember him fondly and fair reason to expect him to rescue her, had gotten him thinking. The thoughts werenât the most comfortable, either, chafing like his shirt no longer did, now that Rin had dressed him up like a Callanthe noble.
âSo whatâs the difference?â he asked her back, in a sunny moment of quiet on the trail.
âThe difference?â She hadnât even jumped, but she did frown back at him.
âYou said that your people donât keep slaves.â He jangled his chains at her. âBut you take captives.â
âA slave is a possession, yes?â she asked, her Bitrani, as always, careful and stilted. âBut a captive has a chance of being anything.â
âBut youâre not going to take your prisoners of war and put them to work running your towns, for instance. You have war-brides like Sarella â the girl in Ossulund? In Bitrani, weâd call her a slave. And you have captives like me.â And he wasnât going to think about the possibility that his position might be the same as Sarellaâs. âWhat about the rest of them?â What were they doing with his countrymen? âYou told that farmer heâd go back to his family. Is that common practice?â
Now, she turned to regard him with a strange look, one he hadnât seen on her face before. On a Bitrani officer, heâd think it was respect, but from her, he couldnât be certain. âEnlisted men, yes,â she answered carefully. âFarmers, workers, Their families and villages need them.â
âGood.â He paused, thinking about that for a moment, before he added âThank you.â
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/154262.html. You can comment here or there.
Timora, from Fae-Bane
Her photoref pre-change is this; I’m still chewing on her Change.
She’s on the part of the family tree that involves Smitty http://pics.livejournal.com/aldersprig/pic/00044hd5 – who is a kelpie – and several non-canon characters. I *know* her change involves water/water spirits – I’m thinking a semi-water-horse-faun thing?
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/153952.html. You can comment here or there.
Work & home stuff kept the writing short yesterday, but the donations have been filling my giraffey bank! We’ve reached the third donation incentive – if you only left one or two prompts, please feel free to go back and add a second/third!
DW – here
LJ – here
*dance*
Thank you all for all the support!!
(the original incentive was “write to all the prompts received in 24 hours,” but that’s not all that many more than the $65-level, soooooo….)
You can read all the giraffe call stories on this tag (or this one)
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/153601.html. You can comment here or there.
For The ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clare_dragonfly‘s prompt.
Faerie Apoc, Addergoole Year 9 – landing page here (or on LJ)
Commenters: 7
Hell Night, Year 9 of the Addergoole School
The halls were dark and the noises echoing through them sounded nasty. Timora had told Calvin sheâd meet him at breakfast, though, and he was the nicest guy whoâd ever shown an interest in her, so, scary or not, she headed out into the halls.
Things got worse the further she got from her room. The floor seemed sticky, muddy, grabbing at her ankles in the pretty shoes that really werenât all that practical. The halls seemed to close in on her, and walls werenât where they were supposed to be. Strange gooey things squirted out at her from around corners, staining her pretty white shirt and the skirt that sheâd bought at the store specially for this not-really-a-date. Hands grabbed at her, tugging her in all directions.
She struggled on through, hoping that Calvin would understand, hoping that everything would be okay, until she found a quiet, better-lit hallway, a stairway in sight. There. The goo on her shirt was drying clear. Her skirt was fine, if a little wrinkled. Sheâd be fine. Sheâd beâŚ
Hands from nowhere grabbed her around the neck, while other hands grabbed both her wrists, fingernails digging in deeply as she was stretched in three directions, tugged nearly off her feet. Startled as much as frightened, Timora screamed.
The scream seemed to rip through her, coming out her toes and her spine as much as it did out of her mouth, ripping the hallway, shaking the foundations of the underground school. The hands around her let go, and she went tumbling to the floor to the very faint sound of feet running away.
Behind her, she heard a quiet, strangled sound of anguish. She turned around slowly, to see a tall boy staring in horror at her. At her, when his hair looked like a hedgehog was sitting on his head and he had more buckles on his clothes than a gathering of Pilgrims.
âWhat?â she asked, her voice hoarse from screaming and, somehow, still making the walls quake. The wide-eyed boy, with another strangled sound, turned and fled.
âI donâtâŚâ Timora began, just as a hand clamped over her mouth.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/153567.html. You can comment here or there.
For rix_scaedu‘s prompt.
In the same setting, 2 “generations” earlier, as Heirlooms and Old lace (Lj) – The Aunt’Verse.
Commenters: 7
âWhat have we here?â
Ruan wasnât so much talking to herself as she was talking to the hodgepodge she was looking through. Her Aunt Tansy hadnât been, as they say, The Aunt â she was a paternal aunt, for one thing, totally not the right sort, and Ruanâs Aunt Elenora was still alive and well â but the family tradition seemed to hold anyway. Her fatherâs sister had taken a long walk into the ocean, and it was left to Ruan to clean up her mess.
To be fair, the womanâs attic wasnât actually messy. Aunt Tansy had had, like Ruanâs father did, a very tidy mind. Everything was on its own shelf or in its own cubbyhole, labeled tidily in a left-leaning cursive that was probably Tansyâs. (she had been told, by her fatherâs other sister, that nobody had been allowed past Tansyâs sitting room in twenty years. The sister had seemed offended that Ruan had gotten the job.) There was even, in the same leggy script, a catalogue.
That was what intrigued Ruan. Her motherâs family was known to collect some strange things, although not nearly as tidily as Tansy had. But the descriptions here were less descriptions and more names.
Imogene Octavia Workman â red cloche hat with blue ribbon â June 7th, 1905
Cleo Bond â broken bootlace (in manila envelope) â July 15th, 1905
Olivia Twila Saunders â Left shoe, black leather with buckle â October 12th, 1912
Duncan Levy â 3 red buttons, metal (in cigar box) â December 25th, 1914
Willard Ellison â cigarette holder, ivory with ebony inlays (in silk purse) â March 2nd, 1916
Rhoda Burks â three beads from a fringe, glass, peacock blue (in wine glass) â October 27th, 1929
There were well over three hundred entries, each corresponding to a place on a shelf and an object to match. The three beads from the fringe were the last entry, the day before Black Tuesday.
Several entries had check marks next to them â perhaps five, out of the entire book. Ruan picked one of those â the red cloche hat with the blue ribbon, high on a shelf between an ice skate and a primer, and pulled it down, using Tansyâs surprisingly-sturdy stepladder to reach.
The hat nearly jumped at her, pushing her off the ladder and landing her on a rack of winter jackets. The ribbon seemed electric, sending shocks through her fingers, while it tried at the same time to twist around her wrists. Faintly, as if from very far away, she heard: âIâll get you, Iâll get you, you nasty old harridan, canât stand to see others having fun! Let me out! Let me OUT of here!â
âPeace, peace,â Ruan said hastily. âThis isnât Tansy. Peace.â
âIâll give you peace, you⌠what? Not Tansy? Who?â
âHer niece. Tansy⌠is gone. Hrmm. Imogene? Imogene Workman?â
âYes?â Now the voice sounded cautious.
âAll right, Imogene. Iâm going to work on getting you out of there.â
Three Glass Beads, Peacock Blue
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/153151.html. You can comment here or there.
Good morning!
This weekend’s Giraffe call Went Splody in a good way!!.
I wrote 3 more responses yesterday, bringing my total to 19 so far, and finishing the first round of prompts!
I wrote yet-another 100 more words for the Linkback Incentive story (LJ)and I think I owe you one more (Vulture’s linkback; I got Meeks’ and Ysabet’s for their stories)…. ooh, call that 100, Janet’s.
We reached $65! Thank you very much! If you prompted and only left one prompt, head back to the post and add a second prompt – here or here).
You can read all the giraffe call stories on this tag (or this one)
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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/153071.html. You can comment here or there.
Yesterday, we made applesauce.
Monday, we made applesauce and apple cake.
Sunday, we made applesauce.
Saturday, we got lost on an Epic!Quest! for apple cider.
Tonight, we will make applesauce. And maybe can it.
(the makeshift canner (our giant pot and a steamer rack from the Chinese food store) will hold 8 quart jars. Our next-biggest pot will hold about 8 cups of applesauce. So batches.)
There hasn’t been as much work on this house this week, but we got a Giant Order Of Stuff from Lowes yesterday (incl. the stuff for the closet, window molding, log rack supplies, door molding, drywall, insulation… and a chest freezer) so there will be Stuff to Do once again. Also, mudding and painting. This bedroom is taking a lot of mudding.
~~
Read The Kiss, from ysabetwordsmith‘s mid-month Monster House Fishbowl, from my prompt.
Read a short Addergoole fanfic, by cluudle!!
Read Ghost Story, by Rix-Scaedu
~
And someone is trying square foot gardening & Lasagna gardening together!
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/152772.html. You can comment here or there.