Archive | December 2012

Together/Again

For [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s prompt. Blame/credit to @dahob for the names and Changes of the twins.

She looked at him.

He looked at her.

"It’s not that I don’t like you…"

"And I like you, too. It’s just…"

"Yeah." They liked each other, they just couldn’t live together without blowing things up. They’d been trying since they first came to Addergoole. They weren’t getting any better at it.

"The kids?"

"I’ll take Yang. You take Yin. They’re young, they’ll adapt."

Thirteen Years Later

"Bye, mom." Yang kissed his mother on the cheek. "Take care of yourself, all right?"

"That’s my line. You… behave yourself. No mischief you can’t cover up."

"You know I’m a good kid." Yang gave her his best innocent look. "Sweet and harmless."

"I know you are. Go on, sunshine. Shower at least once a week and don’t trust everyone you meet."

She worried about her boy, all alone in this place.

"Check your knives, and keep that spear under your bed." He kissed his daughter on her cheek and patted her head. "Don’t let any boy past your doorway unless he’s willing to promise you he means no harm, and if they give you trouble, tell them they have to meet me before they can get any further with you."

"Da-a-a-d." Yin checked her knives anyway, and gave her father a tight hug. "Don’t go fighting monsters without me, all right?"

"I’ll be safe, sweetie. You do the same." He slipped a palm-knife of bone into her coat pocket. "Don’t borrow anything you can’t pay back right away and don’t lend anything you can’t afford to lose."

"Don’t put your back to someone you don’t know." She patted his hand. "I’ll be fine, dad. Take care."

"You too. Go on, midnight baby."

He worried about his girl, all alone in this place.

"And don’t forget who you are…" Yang muttered his mother’s favorite advice. "As if I…"

"…could forget something like that. Don’t trust anyone I don’t know. How am I …"

"…ever going to meet anyone if I don’t…"

"…trust…"

"YOU!!!"

Bags went flying. The two tackled each other, mirrors save for gender, while their luggage launched across the hallway.

"I thought…"

"…we’d lost we…"

"forever."

On the other side of the school, as the echos of the reunited twins reached their ears, she looked at him. A wistful, amused sigh escaped her lips. "Sometimes Regine knows what she’s doing, after all."

"And sometimes we don’t."
 

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/436981.html. You can comment here or there.

On the Water

For [personal profile] imaginaryfiend‘s prompt.

My twin and I were born on the same day, but on different planes of existence.

My father is a boatwright, you see, and while my mother was carrying me, my father – our father – was creating a boat. Building it from the felled trees to the shaped hull to the sails. Building her, my twin.

Our mother – who sewed the sails and shaped the carvings – told my father that it was a foolish conceit, when we were young. “You’ll turn her brain, telling her the boat is her sister.”

My father, who would not sell that boat, of all the boats he had crafted, smiled, agreed, and persisted in calling the ship his daughter, my twin.

“You’ve got to stop,” my mother said, when I was seven, and running along the boards more evenly than on solid ground, swimming in the ocean rather than playing in the park. “You’re twisting her.”

My father, who had watched me learn from my twin how to swim, smiled, nodded, agreed, and continued calling her my twin and my sister.

He couldn’t see her, the way I could, but I don’t think he needed to. He had brought forth the shape of my sister, and, in that shaping, he knew where her soul was – and that she had as much soul as I did.

“Stop it, or she’ll be ruined for anything but sailing.” My mother was not shouting, but it was a close thing. I was a teenager, and I had taken to the seas like I had been born with a keel as much as my sister had.

“Yes.” My father nodded, and smiled, and agreed. “She has been ruined for aught but the sea since she and her sister were begun.”

“She. Is. Not. Her. Sister.” And now my mother shouted. And now my sister and I shouted back, with her keel slapping the water and my voice rising up across the water.

“Yes. We. Are.”

And that was when things truly got complicated.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/436692.html. You can comment here or there.

Sister Trouble

This is to @DaHob’s request for something involving Joff and Ivette in school. This takes place in Year 7 of the Addergoole School, in some poor unsuspecting college.

“Man, your sister….” Nathan shook his head. “I don’t know how you live with her, man. If she was my sister…”

Joff could feel the waves of lust coming off of Nathan. He looked away, hiding a smirk with a mumble about “Man, s’my sister.” His sister, the succubus.

Because his sister (and housemate, in the apartment he’d insisted they get) was who she was, he did ask, curiously, “you haven’t?”

He found the way Nathan flushed – and his nervous expression – to be very interesting. What was Ivette up to? “What? No, man, I mean… I know she’s saving herself for marriage.”

“She’s what?” Joff sprayed his beer, and then had to hastily adjust Nathan’s emotions before the bigger kid could freak out. “Sorry. I mean,” he concocted a lie hastily, “she’s mentioned that before, but I didn’t think she’d go through with it. At home, sure, but here, you know, college, all these handsome guys around…”

Aaaand now Nathan thought he was gay. Well, a lot of the small-town types couldn’t tell “gay” from “pansexual” anyway, and it wasn’t like Joff wasn’t sleeping with Oliver and Mark from Nathan’s fraternity (and Alice and Amy from the sister sorority. Letting him and his sister loose on a college campus might have been Regine’s worst mistake yet).

Nathan’s funny colors didn’t seem to be ack, gay funny colors, though. They were still lust colors. Interesting lust colors.

“Look.” Joff stood up. “I gotta study for tomorrow’s class. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll have a talk with Ivette, okay?” He patted Nathan’s shoulder, and watched how the boy’s emotions swirled. He should go out drinking more.

No, he should study more. He had promised Zeke he was going to try a real career, something he really wanted to do.

“You’ll talk to her? For me?”

“She can’t stick to this ‘saving herself’ thing forever. I know my sister.”

In more ways than I ought to. He dodged before Nathan could drunk-hug him, and headed home, wondering what the hell Ivette was up to.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/441413.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/436420.html. You can comment here or there.

Littermate

For [personal profile] imaginaryfiend‘s prompt; before/after A Couple Helping Hands

Cúmhaí was in Addergoole.

Begley had known she was coming. It’s how it happened, or so everyone told him.

But he’d been here a year, where nobody knew he was The Midget (well, okay, he was still far too short, but in Addergoole, you learned not to judge too much based on size, or the four-foot-tall girl ate your shins.) And after that, it was one thing to know your giant sister would be showing up, and another thing to have her there, sneering and stupid and getting into trouble.

Begley sighed. She wouldn’t talk to him, of course. She wouldn’t really even look at him. She was a miserable pain in the tail, but she was his sister, and if anyone was going to kick the snottiness out of her, it was going to be him.

And it was Hell Night. Hell Night when everyone wanted to beat on everyone. Begley had done his time under the collar. It hadn’t been horrid, but it wasn’t what he wanted for his sister (even if it would teach her a thing or two)

And there was his sister, fighting against The Thing. Losing against The Thing. In a fair fight, Cúmhaí was a wildcat… wild… dog, he supposed, but there was nothing fair about this, and she didn’t know what she was up against.

“Let… her… GO.” No fucking creep was going to Keep his sister. Certainly not THIS fucking creep. He dodged danced, distracted, slipped, slid, and, when he had The Thing all turned sideways… bit.

A mouthful of The Things’s Things was not what Begley wanted, but it was what he needed right now. The scream told him he’d hit the right spot.

The flying through the air told him he hadn’t hit him hard enough.

Coming to in his sister’s arms told him he must have done something right.

Next: Strange Favors

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/436097.html. You can comment here or there.

Unicorn Updated, Rix’s story to my prompt, and her call

(1) I have updated (finally) The Unicorn Factory Landing Page, first in a series of weekly updates.

Let me know if you think something’s missing or doesn’t make sense.

(2) Rix has written to my prompt: A New Tradition, which is an awesome little story.

(3) Her Prompt Request will be closing soon, so if you haven’t left a prompt, go do that soon!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/435795.html. You can comment here or there.

A couple helping hands

For [personal profile] kay_brooke‘s prompt. Set in Addergoole in a later year; @Inventrix’s lovely random AG-character generator gave me Cumhai and Begley, and the rest was easy.

“What. The. Hell?” Cúmhaí darted through the halls, bouncing off of walls that weren’t the right shape or size anymore.

She could smell the shapes of the halls, that was the thing, and, one, being able to smell walls pretty much freaked her out, and, two, they weren’t the same shape as they’d looked yesterday.

Also, her ears hurt, for a much larger value of “ear” than she was used to.

And she thought the floors might be moving.

“Oh, look, a pupp… bir… puppy bird. Come here, pup.” The floor was moving, moving because someone was thudding towards her with the biggest feet she’d ever seen on a human being.

Then again, this place seemed to defy the definition of “human being” she was used to.

“Back up,” she snarled. “Back up and leave me alone.”

“Fraid I can’t do that, little pup. Not today.”

“Stop calling me pup!” He was a lot bigger than her, and he was blocking the hall. And the hall was moving, which was totally unfair.

“Coo!”

And, to top things off, there was her obnoxious little-older-brother Begley, ducking in between Cúmhaí and the giant. “Coo, I’ve got this one.”

“Oh, bork off, Beagle.” He sort of looked beagle-y today, more than her midget brother ever had before, ears and all. She landed a punch on the giant’s nose and started running.

“Coo!”

But she was gone. She’d had one blessed year at home, one quiet year without her obnoxious older brother. And then she’d gotten sent here, here, and that was all his fault too. And now he was even trying to “protect” her. He’d always been trying to protect her, and It had always been ridiculous.

And now the halls were twisting and bending, and her inner ear was trying to turn itself inside out. Puppy bird. Puppy bird? What kind of stupid nickname was puppy bird?

Her nose hurt.

“Oh, hello.”

The voice came out of nowhere, as did the hands that suddenly wrapped their way around Cúmhaí’s throat, cutting off her air, and grabbed for her hair, pulling her head back, and grabbed for her… tail? tail?… forcing her backwards into an arch. “Aren’t you lovely?”

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe. She could’t move. There were too many hands. Hands everywhere.

Much to her humiliation, Cúmhaí realized she was panicking. She couldn’t move. Every time she tried an attack, another hand grabbed her, blocked her, bent her further backwards. And she was seeing stars.

“Let her go!”

Shit, not the Beagle again. Not that.

“She’s mine, little pup. She’s going to be doing what I say pretty soon, aren’t you, pretty birdie?”

“Ack.”

“See?” The invisible hands bent her a little further backwards. She felt as if her spine was breaking. “And she’s going to be mine, and be good. Because if she’s not, I’ll break her back and leave her for the giant.”

Fuck. Fuck. She struggled in earnest this time, only to get pulled even further back on herself.

“Let her… GO.” She heard the impact, but couldn’t see a damn thing. Her captor was laughing, of course he was. Everyone laughed at the Beagle. Laughing, laughing… and suddenly, the laughing turned to screaming.

“I’ll get you, you midget piece of shit.” From ten hands on her, she felt only four. Four she could deal with. She began fighting in earnest, pulling herself back on herself.

She had just gotten free when she heard a yelp, like a sad puppy being thrown.

Next: Littermate (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/435439.html. You can comment here or there.

Cat Signal (like a Bat Signal only… cattier)

Just a general service announcement/apology:

Between work currently being very busy and rather full of overtime, and IRL being… stressful… I’m not putting out words as fast as I’d like.

I’ll write all the words, I promise. Just… not tonight.

Please be patient while I get through this.

Thanks,

The Lyn

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/434948.html. You can comment here or there.

Nephew-Nieces and Other Family

To [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt.

Addergoole has a landing page here.

If you would like to see this family tree, I can oblige.


First day of school, Year 21 of the Addergoole School

“Bye, Mom.” Dom and Carey kissed their mom-dad’s cheeks, patted its shoulders, and fled into the school before they could be burdened with any more excessive advise. “We’ll be fine!”

It was Carey who called it over a shoulder, because Carey was in charge of reassuring that parent; Dom got to reassure their other biological parent, when Ty visited.

“Free at last.” Dom’s quip fell a little weakly as they stared at the door – a thick steel door in short cement wall that seemed to come out of the ground.

“Do you think Mom-dad…?”

“Worries too much? Yeah. Loads.” Dom made its voice sound firm, no matter how shaky it was feeling. “Look, we’re gonna be fine.”

“Of course you are!” A lush girl patted them both on the back. “Aren’t you two pretty? And you’re going to do just fine; I’ll watch after you. I’m Adorlee, by the by.”

“Dominique sh’Tya.” Dom held out a hand, which conveniently meant turning around and moving out of the new arrival’s grasp. “This is my twin, Cary sh’Jaya.”

“Your twin… by a different mother?” Her pretty brow furrowed. Dom sighed. They’d figured, maybe, here in Addergoole, it wouldn’t confuse people so much.

“Both our parents are…”

“Wait, did you say Tya? Oh, darnit all! That makes you my nephews.”

“Nieces.” Carey had opinions about gender. They were different from Dom’s opinions.

“Nephew-nieces. Are you one of Mi – Professor VanderLinden’s?”

“Oh, now don’t make it sound like such a thing… but yes.” The pretty girl – Adorlee? – Adorlee pouted at them. “Well, at least let me show you around.”

“Or me.” The voice was different. Angrier. Colder. The face was different – older, since it had been over a decade. But Dom recognized a brother.

“Eryk!” Carey and Dom left the overbearing Adorlee in the dust to surround their half-brother in hugs. “You can show us around.”

Carey had opinions on a lot of things. Incestuous family tree or not, Dom hoped Eryk-is-an-acceptable-boyfriend wasn’t one of them.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/434674.html. You can comment here or there.

#Lexember post ten – Conlanging objects in the Cālenyan world – The Dairy Case

@Shutsumon & I were talking about food words, which reminded me that I have a goat-based culture and hadn’t handled, ah, goat-based cultures.

Yogurt cultures, that is.

So here we go: the dairy case – kōm, kōtez, kōba, kōbetez, kōbânuk, kyōm –> kōkyōm

Milk, to start with – kōm
And then, of course, cheese – kōtez. This is a paneer-like unaged cheese.
Digress to butter for a moment – kōba
And then to a soft, aged, cultured cheese – kōbetez (butter cheese)
And to a hard aged cheese, named after the farmer who developed it – kōbânuk, Bânuk’s cheese.

And then there’s yogurt.

The original word for yogurt – kyōm – means “bad milk.” But, as they came to realize it wasn’t actually bad, the word evolved. – kōkyom

All of these things are used in Cālenyan cooking. Maybe in January I’ll come up with some recipes.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/434382.html. You can comment here or there.

Linkback story: The Twin Omen

This is the linkback story for the December Giraffe Call (and on LJ). If you have linked back to the giraffe call, please leave a note here to receive your additional 50 words.

Names from Fourteen Minutes

In the nation of Quottes in the time of the seventeenth ruler, the birth of twins one male and one female, was believed to be a horrible omen.

Two twins of the up-swing gender lent power to their gender. Two twins of the down-swing could be bartered, sold, or married off for even more power. But fraternal twins, a boy and girl brought into the world at the same time, stood athwart the scales and, it was said, would through everything out of balance. Their chaos gods, in this nation beneath the Quoist Mountains, were fraternal twins.

So when it was that, in the seventeenth year of the reign of the seventeenth ruler, the Queen gave birth to one boy and one girl in one pregnancy, the nation was reasonably alarmed. As went the ruler’s children, so went the nation. And when every other pregnancy that year yielded the same…

…the nation was reasonably concerned. If a royal pair of fraternal twins were a bad omen, an entire nation of such was just about enough to tip the scales on its own.

The upward gender had not been in power for that long, and the downward gender were not ready, not yet, to take back their scepter. It was not time for a reorganization, not yet!

The wise and the clever and the powerful put their heads together, and together, they created a plan. The whole nation, every new parent, came together to fool the scales and hold the status quo.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/432812.html. You can comment here or there.