Archive | October 2011

Monster

Oct15

For Cluudle‘s prompt.

Faerie Apoc, Addergoole – landing page here (or on LJ)

This happens before the storyline of Addergoole; for reference, see this chapter

Commenters: 2

Badrick died.

He died like he had in his dreams, bloody and violently. They pulled him apart, the mob, and, although the details were different, the pain was the same. The shouting was the same. The blood splattering everywhere, his blood, his entrails, his life.

“Why?” he managed, before the farmer hit him in the throat with the pitchfork. He knew why, deep in his cold heart. Monster, they’d screamed. Monster, beast, demon. Demon, they shouted, as the pitchfork pierced his heart.

That wouldn’t be enough to kill him, not on its own, but they had come prepared. They doused him in oil, pinned him to the crossroads with wooden stakes, his heart still pumping blood out of his body, his lungs still trying to push air. They lit him on fire and then, by some luck, then, as his pants began to burn, he lost consciousness.

~

Robert woke screaming, not for the first time, rolled over and stifled the scream in his pillow before anyone could hear him. He could still feel the fire licking over his skin, although a quick, surreptitious pat-down told him that no, he wasn’t on fire. He wasn’t dying. Not this time, not right now.

He wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep tonight. He slipped on a shirt over his sweats, checked to make sure he hadn’t woken anyone, and headed out for a walk.

The dreams weren’t always the same, but they always ended badly, in blood and fire; they always ended with or near death. And they’d been getting worse. They’d been getting more and more vibrant, lately, seeming to take over even when he was awake.

His ankle twisted, snapped, seemed to stretch out of shape, and he grunted, swallowing another scream. Now even the pain was following him into the waking hours. Was he never going to have a moment of peace, a moment – thought and complaint were cut off by a feeling like his skin splitting, as if everything inside was too big to be contained anymore.

A woman screamed, loud and terrified. “A monster!” Mrs. Colburn, from down the street. She sat behind them in church. “A monster!” she repeated, “a demon from hell! Kill it, KILL IT!”

~

He woke in a field, in pain and stinking of smoke, with no memory of how he’d gotten there, no memory of what it was like to not be in pain… no memory, he realized, at all.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/147086.html. You can comment here or there.

Giraffe Call Story – Ninja Kitty (Tir na Cali catpeople)

Oct15

For ankewehner‘s prompt.

Tir na Cali, catpeople. Cali has a landing page here (or on LJ)

Commenters: 10

“I don’t mean to sneak up on people, I just forget to make a sound sometimes.”

Cob looked at Lea, her ears raked back, her tail limp, everything in her body language saying “I’m cute, please don’t hurt me,” and sighed. This adorable little kitty had been trained in combat since she was old enough to walk. The mods she’d inherited from her parents had given her sharp teeth and sharper claws, and, whether it was nature or nurture that had made her predatory, she had turned out bloodthirsty either way.

“Lea,” he said patiently. “That’s a very good skill to have when you’re in the field.” If she was ever sent into the field. For all the training, he wasn’t sure the Agency would ever use their hybrid cat-people for their ostensible purpose. They looked too cute, even licking blood off their hands, and were too human-cat creepy, even by the standards of pet-shop moddies. They, Cob’s fellow trainer Jac had muttered, were firmly in the Uncanny Valley, and, being there, were too damn freaky to send out into the general population.

Even to their trainers.

“I’m very good at it, too,” she answered sweetly. “Aren’t I? Seen and not heard, right, that’s what Lady Pia said, but I’m not seen, either, am I? Unless I want to be.”

“Aaah. Come here, sweetie. One. I’m sorry about Pia. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about – but don’t quote me on that. Two. Don’t take out your frustration with the higher-ups on me, Miss Kitty.”

She blinked at him, all innocence, but her tail was lashing. “But Cob,” she complained sweetly, “you are my higher up.”

Cob studied the charming teenaged assassin-in-training who was his primary responsibility and realized, perhaps for the first time, just how human the hate in her eyes was.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/146698.html. You can comment here or there.

Giraffe Call: Spooks, Creeps, Ghosts, and Ghouls

Oct15

The call for prompts is now Closed!!

open! For the next 24 hours Until I write all the current prompts, I will taking your prompts on the theme of Spooks and Creeps, Ghosts and Ghouls.

I will write (over the next week) at least one microfic (150-300 words) to each prompter. If you donate, I will write to all of your prompts, and write at last 500 additional words for each $5 you donate, to the prompt(s) of your choice.

In addition to the donation incentives below, I have two new incentives:

For every linkback I receive, I will post another 50 words on a story (See the poll for setting here.

I will write, for the story with the most commenters by Friday morning, a piece about that setting.

And, of course, donations are always well-received:

If I reach $35 in donations, I will post an additional 1000-2000-word fic on the subject of the audience’s choice. Reached!

If I reach $65, I will write at least 2 microfics for everyone, whether or not they donated. Reached! Add a second prompt if you haven’t already!!

If I reach $95, I will write to every prompt I get in the next 24 hours – if something truly bugs me, I’ll ask you to re-prompt (or a third prompt to each prompter). At this point, please allow up to 2 weeks for the writing to be completed. REACHED!!!

If I reach $120, I will record a podcast of an audience-choice story and post it for everyone to read. Also, everyone who tipped will get double wordcount.

If I reach $150, I will release an e-book of all of the fiction written to this call and the last one. At this point, please allow up to 4 weeks for the writing to be completed.

I’m still saving up for the giraffe carpet, which will be installed the first week of October November (still can’t find a plumber)!


This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/146380.html. You can comment here or there.

Poll: Linkback Incentive

Oct14

During tomorrow’s Giraffe Call, I will post one segment of a new story for every linkback received. Which setting should the story be from?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/145759.html. You can comment here or there.

Standoff

Oct14

New flash series! I’m going to write one flash for every Icon I have, over 4 LJ accounts, 1 DW, and a whole bunch of not-currently-in-use, until I get bored or run out of icons.

Today’s icon:

Jamian, from Addergoole.

Icon & Art by Djinni

This is in line with Addergoole‘s main timeline, and takes place around Chapter 141-2.

This is going to end badly. But I think that’s okay. Worried and stressed, Jamian didn’t want to go back to the suite yet. He might be the only empath in the crew, but that didn’t mean the rest of them weren’t observant (except Ty, but that was an issue for another day). The Library didn’t seem to like him, the Store bored him, and the Arcade would be full of people.

That left the Village – also full of people, many of them small people and far too many of those Ty’s offspring – and the grotto.

The doors to the grotto were still nearly-invisible, even when the doors to the outside were cooperating, but he managed to find a knob after three tries – and thank god there weren’t any invisible students wandering around, or he’d have run the risk of accidentally groping them – and stepped into the lush rain-forest atmosphere of the indoor garden.

The vines liked to reach out for the unwary, but he found if he stuck to the middle of the path, very few could reach. Perhaps they were pruned that way? Someone had to take care of this place, after all.

Focused on the foliage and the path, the first he saw of the other person was his shoes – black, combat boots, scuffed around the edges. That could be any number of Addergoole students; he looked up further – black pants, no help there – and further up still. The long, dour, Masked face of Aviv greeted him.

Okay, I got to that, and it was 250 words exactly and I said… well, poo, that’s mean, even for me, but I don’t have another Jamian icon coming up any time soon… hey. I just got an Aviv icon. So this one is out of sequence.


Aviv, from Addergoole: this isn’t quite how I see him, but not far off (he had more mouthy squid bits, but, of course, he always Masks them, so maybe he’s half-Masked?

Icon & Art by Catfaice

Aviv glowered at the interloper. He just wanted a few minutes of peace, not to deal with more Fifth drama. Especially not Fifth drama attached to Ty, who was notorious for going overboard in protection of his Kept. There had been that one time someone had made a grab for Shiva… no, not the sort of thing he wanted to get embroiled in, much less be the one responsible for starting a crew war.

From the look on the kid’s face, he was having a similar train of thought. Good. He held up both gloved hands, palms facing the little Daeva. “I’m just looking for some peace and quiet.”

The kid looked him up and down – Jamian, that was his name, right? In Ardell’s cy’ree. And Ty’s. – and clearly noted the guitar, although what else he was noticing – damn succubi – was anyone’s bet. He nodded slowly and showed his hands, mirroring Aviv’s gesture. “Me, too,” he confessed.

A heartbeat passed, and another. They were blocking each other’s path, on a route too narrow to step aside without risking the poisonous vines – and whose idea, Aviv thought sourly, had it been to put poisonous vines in a student hide-out?

Aviv opened his mouth to say something – anything, even, “so, are you going to move?” – to find that Jamian had done the same. Well, let him talk first. Aviv had done his turn on the bottom rung.

“Quipia Tlacatl Jamian oro’Tya(*),” he murmured, and stepped off the path. “It’s a big grotto.”

(*)Preserve the Flesh of Jamian, owned by Tya

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/145542.html. You can comment here or there.

(no subject)

Oct13

Addergoole Main timeline takes place in 1999, Year 5 of the School.

Year 9 is thus 2003-2004. As a reference point, the apocalypse in this setting begins in June 2011.

Hell Night is the Second Saturday of the School Year.
“His,” & “I Hate You” are the Sunday after that.
“Keys” an “Dark Corners” are the Monday after that.
“Arguments with one’s self” Tuesday after that, followed by “Support in Strange Places”
There’s a dance that Saturday, 3rd Saturday
“Say Yes” is the following Tuesday, the third Tuesday of the school year.
“Misery Loves” is the day after that
Prevention v. Cure is this week, 4th week of the year
Skip weekend, 4th weekend
dance weekend, where something happens to Ahouva (as mentioned in the 3-Way stories), 5th weekend
Skip weekend, 6th weekend
dance weekend, 7th weekend
The Three-Way series of shorts (which starts with Witness) takes place the Sunday starting the 8th week.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/145228.html. You can comment here or there.

Thursday, with Soop

Oct13

Yesterday represented a pretense at a break from apples – with butternut soup, our favorite go-to fall recipe (it has cider and apples in it ;-).

Last summer, our garden produced 13 giant butternuts, so we ate a lot of soup and a lot of pumpkin pudding (it’s safe to assume anything that says “pumpkin” in our house is made with butternut; we’ve tried it with pumpkins and don’t like it). This summer, we didn’t have a garden (sadface) (moving), so we had to fake it with farmstands. Not as satisfying, but nearly as tasty.

~~~

Jeriendhal is calling for hallowe’en prompts.

And Rix-scaedu wrote a story based on a typo of mine.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/144881.html. You can comment here or there.

Spring and Autumn: Orange Juice

Oct12

To skysailor‘s prompt “Orange Juice;” this comes after Having Fun.

Stranded Verse has a Landing Page (Lj

“Orange Juice.” Autumn thumped the mugs down on the tiny table in her tiny RV, the noise causing her little sister to cringe. “Patented hangover cure: ghetto mimosas and a big pile of hash browns.”

“You are a cruel, cruel woman,” Spring complained. She was still half in the garb she’d gone out in the day before, hay in her hair and mud on her hem. It had been a long afterparty and a beautiful night – and the man had been beautiful, too, with those leather pants and the wicked way he swung the whip, never mind that he was easily old enough to be her father.

“I am a sensible, sensible woman,” Autumn replied. She had, as far as Spring could tell, quaffed her share and danced just as long as anyone, although Spring had found her alone in her bunk this morning. “Drink your orange juice and know your sister loves you.”

Spring downed the glass in one swallow, barely tasting the fizz and the vodka, the whisper of a Strand-pull tickling the back of her throat. “That’s one hell of a hangover cure,” she complained. “What’s in the potatoes? Dynamite?”

“Tabasco and penicillin,” her sister answered mildly. “I like the mule-skinner as much as the next girl…”

“I’m always careful. Well, except for about the bite marks.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/144476.html. You can comment here or there.