Archive | August 2014

The Dead Gods Come Visiting, a story-bit of the FaeApoc

Aug10

This story is set in the late apoc of fae apoc, and follows
Mourning Lost Gods and
The Destruction of the Gods.

We’d gotten – not comfortable – but okay with the quiet, even in the few weeks it had been. We’d started to become accustomed to the lack of aerial fights, to the lack of strange semi-human people attacking us, to the way the world stayed the same – ruined, barely habitable, but the same – from day to day.

And then this half-dead… elf limped into our shelter. She was muttering under her breath, things we could barely tell were magic, and she was bleeding from at least seventeen places. Her stone-like skin was cracked, split, and burned, and underneath, she was bleeding red like the rest of us.

We froze. I froze, at least. Around me, the others shifted, reaching for weapons we no longer kept at hand. The god was barely over five foot tall, a tiny girl, but we had been less terrified of muscle-bound bikers with shotguns.

I saw the minute she noticed us, her tiger’s-eye eyes going wide. She ducked her head in what, in a human, I would have thought was an apology.

“I saw your fire,” she croaked. “I…”

And then she fell over. Sticking from her back was an arrow shaft; they hadn’t even bothered to strip all of the thorns off of the hawthorn before shooting it.

We spent a few minutes arguing. Quite a few of us wanted to dump her off the roof or, preferably, another roof, further away. A couple wanted to cut her head off, just to be sure that she stayed dead.

But Marie and Donald, who had been a paramedic and a school nurse before the world ended, they checked her pulse and found her still among the living, and that made everything more complicated. We didn’t so much talk about it as we shared a twelve-pointed look.

Then Kingfisher pulled out his filleting knife.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/839925.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/768781.html. You can comment here or there.

Robot, a story-test of Clockwork Apoc

Aug9

“You’re a robot,” they’d told him, “an automaton. We made you, we created you. You are a steam-powered device. You have no feelings, you have no emotions. You do what you are told.”

They clothed him in metal until he forgot he had ever had flesh. They told him what he was, and told him nothing else. They fed him a sludge they informed him would lubricate his joints, and they taught him that to fail to obey meant sharp pain – that, in essence, his programming would not allow him to disobey.

“You are our robot,” they told him, and parade him before tin-hat dictators and penny-ante princes. “You are our robot.”

They taught him to be their robot, until one day, he taught them that humans, unlike the robot they’d made him, could die.

This came from a 7th Sanctum prompt: The theme of this story: metaphorical conflict. The main character: neurotic robot. The start of the story: service. The end of the story: education.
It sort of wrote itself from that.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/768634.html. You can comment here or there.

Reiassan Demifiction – Shoes & Fashion (@inventrix) (Steam Era)

Aug9

The Lannamer Chronicle1

Fashion Stories

The mid-summer2 festival is always a great spectacle and a wonderful time to see what the fashion world holds, and this year was no different.

The Lady Etaememevvyo3 made, as is her wont in recent years, the most impressive splash with her details. You may remember the hat she wore last year, done in an ancient Bitrani-esque fashion but with decidedly Calenyena notes?

This year, of course, Etaevyo4 was under obligation to out-do herself, especially with her elder sister’s wedding so quickly upcoming. And outdo herself she did!

Her headpiece this year was a more sedate thing, hearkening back to the ancient styles of her ancestors. It had to be; she presumably wanted nothing to draw attention away from her footwear.

And, for the first time in many a mid-summer festival – or perhaps in her life – everyone was staring at Lady Etaememevvyo’s toes.

The boots she wore – they have to be called boots – went up to her knees, as a riding boot or a campaigning boot might. However, the soft felt of their nature – dyed in streaks and swirls to complement the solid colors of her dress – was attached to a hard wooden sole, which had a wedge heel of at least a hand-span.

What’s more, the felt had been cut away strategically, so that Etaevyo’s toes, the arches of her feet, and her ankles remained bare.

Rumor has it that she will be auctioning off these boots at Kaidebbee’s. Last year, the affectation she called a hat sold for enough to finance the Pyietnaazh Orphanage for an entire year.

1. After some consideration of newspaper titles, I decided, short of making up the Calenyena word for “talking stick (which I should do), “Chronicle” was the closest to a Calenyena concept while still very clearly saying “newspaper.”

2. Lit. “Hot and Wet season.” The Calenyena recognize three seasons – Cold, Hot/wet, and Harvest.

3. Etaememevvyo: Ee-tay-meemeev-vyoh

4. Etaevyo: as is common in this era, the newspaper is shortening the Lady’s name to the familiar first couple syllables+last couple syllables.

5. This newspaper is contemporary with Edally Academy.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/768056.html. You can comment here or there.

Reynard Spills his Story – a new story taking place in Fae Apoc/Addergoole ‘verse

Aug9

First: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/753621.html
Previous: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/763771.html

The woman – the woman it appeared Reynard might belong to – was staring at him. Her eyebrows were raised in clear doubt, and her expression was nothing he’d call a smile, no matter how generously he wanted to color the truth.

He shifted again. He knew that was a bad idea; every time he did it, another thorn pricked him. But he couldn’t help it. He’d never been all that good at sitting still.

“It’s not that exciting of a story.” It was a weak protest, in part because he was pressing against the orders and suggestions she’d put on him, in part because his brain was fogged and his thoughts were moving slower than molasses.

But it was a protest because of those things, too, and so he stalled for time while he tried to come up with a plausible coloring of events he barely remembered.

She gave him three heartbeats to believe he’d gotten a break. “At the moment, fox-boy, it is the most important story of your life, because it determines what happens next. Considering your current situation, I’d tell it carefully, concisely, and well if I were you.”

Was there a single woman who’d graduated Addergoole with a sense of humor?

Well, if he’d gone through Addergoole as a girl, he might not have, either. Reynard shrugged, despite the prickling of poison in his arms, and gifted his probably-Owner with the best smile he could muster up.

“Yes, ma’am. It was something like this…” He dropped his voice, and tried for the storytelling cadences he’d learned from his Mentor.

    Know, oh Mistress (he began), that I am not an evil man, not as aught but the book people would have you believe.

    (The woman leaned back, and something that could have been a smile crossed her lips.)

    But I was Named truly, and truly I lived up to my Name, ever since the day that the school released me…

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/767819.html. You can comment here or there.

Please to pick a random number for me

Aug8

Between  one and eighteen, to pic the next thing on my writing list

The list, not in order of its numbers, includes:


 Clockwork Apoc
 Fdomme: Blachalclchel
 Demifiction Meme
 Live** the apoc
 Daily Prompt Friday Flash
 update commish page
 Rix Words!
 Reynard
 More, please
 Cynara
 Kelkyag Words!
 Summary
 Landing Page
 Rion Writing Inspiration
 Update publications!  character meme via google
 Doomsday
 collate liveblog

(i.e., if you chose one, it will not be Clockwork Apoc.  But a number somewhere in the range of 1-18 will be.)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/767701.html. You can comment here or there.

Character Meme Day One – Basics and cosmetics (Tairiekie)

Aug8

So, I decided to do a character meme, and this one showed up first on google. Because the theme of the month is Reiassan, I’m starting with Tairiekie. 

Age?
Fifteen, I think.

Date of Birth?
We’re going to say she was born late in the harvest season, just before the snows.

Hair color?
Black, a rather solid dark black.

Eye color?
yellowish brown.

Skin color/nationality?
She’s Calenyena through and through, with toasty brown skin and the aforementioned yellowish-brown eyes and black hair.

Accent (if any)?
Taikie, of course, doesn’t think she has one. Her accent is up-country, a little lazy on the edges compared to a down-country accent.

Height?
She’s fairly average for her people, around five foot one.

Weight?
about 125 lbs – she’s got a lot of muscle mass

Tattoos?
None yet, but we shall see what the school year brings.

Piercings?
As above.

Birthmarks?
Disfigurements?
Scars?
no birthmarks, no disfigurements, and a few scars – on her knee, on her left palm, across one shoulder – from childhood.

Do they have any nicknames? Where did they come from?

Her father called her Tair-Tair, a baby name.
She prefers Taikie, in the style that’s common (First syllable, last syllable).

Her family come from Amenet – oh, this is where her nicknames come from. They’re pretty standard shortenings of her name.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/767298.html. You can comment here or there.

…Tied up with String

Aug8

To [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s commissioned continuation of ♪Brown Paper Packages♫.

The tag read, in a tidy handwriting that Ackelea was pretty sure she recognized,

Don’t say I never gave you anything.
For that matter, don’t let him say I never gave him anything, either. There are a lot worse options for him than you – me included – and the boy was practically begging for it.

By signing the below, I, Ackelea cy’Solomon, agree to take Ownership of the attached package. He shall live under my name until I choose to release him.

There was a line underneath, and, thoughtfully, a pen attached. Ackelea muttered a couple quick Idu Workings to be certain she wasn’t signing anything but what she could see, and then marked the signature line with her glyph.

She knew what was coming, so she was braced for the ear-popping world-twisting feeling as the Keeping took hold; the squeak from inside the package as her ears popped was the first indication that there was actually a real, live, conscious person in there.

The boy was practically begging for it.

That could mean a lot of things, especially if she was right about her anonymous gifter. Ackelea murmured a quick Levitation Working and got the package inside her threshold. After a moment’s consideration, she settled it down on her bed.

“Hold on a moment,” she told the brown wrappings. Getting no response, she took said moment to change into a nice kilt and her favorite shirt. Pants might have given a stronger impression – but she didn’t like to wear enough clothes to wear a kilt. Too warm, too confining.

The brown wrappings, obviously, held still while she changed. And they held still while she began to unwrap them – it- him.

Someone had taken the time – ha, someone – to wrap this package up nice, so she took her time to appreciate the wrapping. Twine, real twine, tied in pretty little double-bows. Seventeen of them – she counted out loud – and then three layers of paper. It wasn’t butcher’s paper – again, she checked – just brown paper spiraled around the person inside.

She got the feet out first. Bare feet, naked feet. And then the ankles – also bare, the thighs-naked – and “Oh, aren’t you nice.” She found herself making a noise like a purr, her, purring. This was going to be an interesting year, wasn’t it?

“You are a nice one… so far.” Flat stomach, almost too flat. Skinny-boi. She almost didn’t want to keep unwrapping.

She got to the nipples, to find them both pierced with thick-gauge piercings. “Well, that’s not all that common these days, is it?” She found her lips curling in a smile. “You really were asking for it, weren’t you?” She was talking to a wrapped package. That was, she had to admit, a little weird. Right. Time to get the mouth unwrapped.

The neck was bare. That was – interesting. Useful, though. The mouth, on the other hand, he’d wrapped up, gagged with a long knot of rope. “Aah.” Ackeleah chuckled. “Ah, that’s adorable.” She patted the bare flank. “All right, almost done unwrapping you.”

This time, the boy made a noise – not much of one, just a little thing. It almost sounded like a protest.

Ackeleah pinched what came to hand – his inner thigh – and went back to unwrapping. He fell quiet again, leaving her to her monologue. “You’re gorgeous, you know. But I’m sure you know that, looking like this. Looking like – where did your clothes go? You can’t have been wandering around naked on Hell Night… well, I guess that would have counted as asking for it.” She pushed the paper off his face, revealing wide eyes, wide brown eyes staring at her. “Are you worried, boy? A little concerned about your situation?”

She was purring again. What was she going to do with herself?

She sliced the rope gagging him with a very careful application of claws, and pulled the knot out of his mouth. Hemp. He’d been tangled up by a sadist – of course, she’d guessed that already.

“There you go. Now… what am I going to do with you?”

He dropped off the in the most graceful controlled fall Ackeleah had ever seen, landing on his knees with his hands behind his back and his head bowed. His voice was rough, but there was no hesitation at all in it.

“Whatever you want, mistress. Anything at all.”

♪When the dog bites, when the bee stings…♫

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/767112.html. You can comment here or there.

Chewing on Character Motivations

Aug8

[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith was talking about character motivations, and it occurs to me that I could use some work on that topic.

Err, my writing that is, although I couldn’t exactly tell you what my motivations are, either…<.<

This is placeholder post until I get some more time to think about this.

So! Either:

* Name a character of mine, any character of mine, and I will come up with a piece of their motivation.

* Say “random,” and I will use a random date generator to pick a day & a piece from that day, and tell you something about /their/ motivation.

* Tell ME something about a character’s motivation (mine or someone else’s), and we can discuss.

Posted:
* Rozen
* Maureen, Lady Foxglove
* Rin
* Caitrin
*Morrigan

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/766913.html. You can comment here or there.