Archive | April 2016

Commission Slots open!

Apr19

I’m now taking up to four $5 commission slots!

$5 will get you 250 words on any given topic of your choice – if you’re not sure if I want to write it, ask first, but, for instance, anything tagged “morepls” is a fair bet.

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3.
4.

How Many Words?
250 Words $5.00 USD
500 Words $10.00 USD
750 Words $15.00 USD
1200 Words $20.00 USD
1800 Words $25.00 USD

Bonus!
If all 4 slots are filled by the close of day on the 23rd April (Say 9 pm. Eastern time), I’ll write an additional 250 words to a prompt chosen by the donors.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1090766.html. You can comment here or there.

Mentor… and Student

Apr19

Rix_Scaedu‘s commissioned continuation of Mentor-Student. Her name is Eurydice; it just never comes up in conversation.

“Well,” Doug admitted to the angry young woman in front of him, “we’re stuck with each other. They think we can work together.”

His Student – or so it seemed it was going to be – raised her eyebrow at him. “You sound so thrilled. Don’t go throwing me a party or anything.”

“Well,” Doug grunted, both embarrassed and annoyed, “you’re right. It’s not how it’s supposed to go.”

“Wait.” She leaned forward. “Say that again.”

Doug didn’t bother asking which part she wanted to hear. He could guess. “You’re right.”

“Awww, yeah.” She lit her lighter again. “I could get used to that. So you don’t like ‘em screwing with the system, either. So why’d they stick you with me? We can ‘work together?’ What’s that code for? You can brainwash me better?”

Doug barked out a laugh. “Not the brainwashing sort.”

“So what then? Are you the arsonist sort?” She flicked her lighter again. Doug imagined that had made some adults flinch, back out in the world. Maybe here, too, considering the fires she’d already lit.

Doug wasn’t worried. He muttered a Working and flicked up a small flame in the palm of his hand. “Sometimes.”

Her eyes widened. “Woah.”

Doug felt his lips curling into a real smile. “Woah,” he agreed. He closed the hand to vanish the fire and gave himself a moment to think about the words he’d use.

“Forget why they wanted us together,” he started slowly. “They are not responsible for this. I can teach you.” He watched something in her face start to close up and he made a wild guess. He smiled the way he might at the start of a battle — a little fierce and a lot ready. “And I’m not afraid of you.”

How Many Words?
250 Words $5.00 USD
500 Words $10.00 USD
750 Words $15.00 USD
1200 Words $20.00 USD
1800 Words $25.00 USD


This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1090377.html. You can comment here or there.

Making a fantasy map with lentils~

Apr18

First things first: hattip [personal profile] becka_sutton, for showing me this video.

This is my attempt at creating Yet Another Fantasy World via the “pile of stuff on the paper” method.

Images moved here.

First attempt: sort of a shark under the US. Not quite the look I wanted.

Second attempt: much closer.

Close-up of the lower islands.

And here’s the draft map!

Next up: Mountains

Edited to add: dimensions

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And Atlantis:

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(this is for the setting I’ve been working on for a story whose working title is Portal Bound)

P.S. North is to the right on all these. Not sure why the images insist on being rotated.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1090269.html. You can comment here or there.

At Home, a story of Spring

Apr18

After/concurrent with Nothing could possib-lie go wrong and Places One Doesn’t Go.

The fest was wild, and Spring and Lance were in the heart of it. A place like this didn’t need too much tangling – so many people here were already quite twisted up, wound in with other people, braided in with their own stories. But it was still fun to watch the tangles and knots, and it was still just a fun place to be, where nobody would look sideways at the girl with chaos tattooed on her chest or the handsome man in the very-well-fit pants and silky shirt who somehow seemed at home in the sea of tie-dye and batik, ripped denim and torn flannel.

“You look perfect,” Lance told her. “You’re aligned exactly with this place, did you know that?”

Spring stretched up, fingers tickling the air. “I know. This place is my place. It’s my people.” She dropped her arms so she could wiggle her fingers at a man covered in black-ink tattoos. “It’s like home, you know, like family? Can’t stand to spend all your time there, but it’s awesome when you go back for a bit.”

“Excuse me.” The voice cut across the cacophony, although it sounded both quiet and calm. “I believe you are mistaken about some important matters.” There was no speaker visible. The sound was coming from the back fence.

Spring grabbed Lance’s hand. “Speaking of family… we need to be over there. Now.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1089751.html. You can comment here or there.

Second-year magic lessons

Apr18

This is written to a prompt cluudle left back in August, 2015

Luke didn’t like her, and he really did not like teaching her.

Shahin found that a little amusing, but she tried not to antagonize the man too much. She wanted to become better at Kwxe. Everything she found in every vision told her she was going to need it. Everything the teachers didn’t want to tell her enforced that – up to and including the fact that, despite the fact that Luke did not like teaching her, he’d agreed to meet with her three times a week to practice Kwxe.

“What are you going to use this for?” he demanded today. Shahin smiled, a small expression that was as dry and as careful as she could make it.

“I was thinking,” she offered, “that I would use it to stop Dragons. Or – if I can’t stop them…” She would stop them, she knew it. But that would be much later. “…then to stall them.”

She noted that he was surprised, and a bit chagrined, and quite a bit worried. She decided she could live with that.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1089486.html. You can comment here or there.

Weekend!

Apr18

Such a lovely weekend!

This was my Big Four-Oh, or, as I like to think of it, the very beginning of a 7-month-long celebration. And it was an awesome celebration!

We went to visit our friends in Troy (E.Mc and Pivin; I was in their wedding a couple years ago. We visit them as much as we can manage). There we had awesome sliders (the only meat-on-bread you’ll get me to eat, unless you count tortillas as bread) at http://slidindirty.com/, a short but very fun hike at Saratoga Spa State Park (Hot springs!) and a longer hike around Saratoga Springs, the town. I found some lovely books in a used book store described to me as having non-Euclidian geometry involved in its layout (I think it’s just L-Space 😉 and a nice necklace in a really creepy “antique” market going out of business.

Then we had dinner at http://www.pecksarcade.com/ – nom nom nom.

There was a lot of eating involved in this trip! 🙂 Also a good deal of drinking. The next day was all-you-can-eat sushi as well as buying a bow tie for the kitties (They liked it fine once we took the bell off).

There may be photos. I’ll check tonight.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1089263.html. You can comment here or there.

Birthday (3), a continuation of a story written to @lilfluff’s prompt

Apr15

begun here., continued here

There was so much askew with the world and Trevor’s life had gone completely mad. The only thing he could do was focus on the facts.

He had been stealing – pick-pocketing mostly – and then he had been captured. He’d been given new pants and a collar, his shirt taken away, and then a rich-looking woman had stopped what she was doing to stare at him. He’d been taken home and fed, strange food but tasty, and that had somehow gotten the rich woman in trouble.

And now a maternal-acting woman had fed him even more food. “Her timing is a little bad,” she fussed, “but that isn’t your fault. You’re a skinny thing, aren’t you? Here, have another tart. Herself won’t eat things like this, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make them even when She’s visiting.”

The fussing went on. Trevor took in what he could and filed the rest for later study. He was fed, he was given a place to sleep, he was given clean clothes for the second time in two days, and he’d been admonished not to run off, as if they’d done anything to suggest he ought to. If anything, they’d given him too much to keep him there.

When Elva, the matronly woman, found him an hour later, he was naked save for the collar – which, it turned out, didn’t come off – and napping on a large cushion at the foot of Lady Catherine’s bed. “What?” he asked, at the raised eyebrow Elva gave him. “It’s her birthday, too.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1089005.html. You can comment here or there.

Places One Doesn’t Go, a continuation story, involving Winter

Apr15

After /concurrent with “Nothing could possib-lie go wrong.”

“Hey, the insurance convention’s down the street!”

Festivals like this one were not exactly Winter’s cup of tea, nor were they his forte, nor were they a place of pleasure for him. They were loud and raucous, chaotic by nature, and crowded. And as much as he disliked them, other people disliked him being there.

“Look, man, I don’t know what they told you at the academy, but that’s just not undercover. Also, I’m not dealing anything illegal here.”

They were, however, the best place to meet other Strand-weavers, if you knew the proper places to look.

“Excuse me.” The woman in the pottery booth looked less likely to dislike him on sight than many. Her strands were calm and her peace was deep and thorough. “Have you seen anyone else who looks grossly out of…”

“Hey, who do you kids think you are! This is a private party!”

“Excuse me.” He nodded politely at the woman. “I think I see who I’m looking for now.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1088595.html. You can comment here or there.

Deep in the Tesznerov Forest, a short vignette from an old Giraffe Call (random Fic)

Apr14

Written to [personal profile] thnidu‘s prompt from 2014. here. New setting. Might be part of something else.

The Forest of Tesznerov gave the impression of being a monolith of green and brown, a forbidding wall that slowed and even stopped progress.

But if you could get past the obstructions and into the forest itself, it was bright and sunny, with patches like meadows almost half an acre large. And if you got even further in, near the top of the hill called Thistle Mountain, you might encounter the Cheramia.

Oostely had been that – not lucky, to call it luck was an insult – skilled, the first in a century to get that far and (one hoped) live to tell about it. She perched on a stump and waited, listening, until a chermiach settled down in front of her.

It chirruped out a greeting. In return, Oostely bowed deeply and responded in her own tongue. The Cheramia were one of the truly foreign creatures to be found within the technical confines of the nation, but if she had to try to describe one, Oostely might do as her great-great-grandmother had done and say “a flying cat-snake with some sort of squirrel tail.” They might be as long as the distance between her ankle and hip, but they preferred to coil up like a spring, so they peeked at her through the fluff of their tail.

The chermiach whistle-popped a sound that could be a question, and then squeaked out what sounded like a human word. “Greeeeet,” it clucked.

“Greetings,” Oostely responded. She could not help but notice how sharp the chermiach’s teeth were, or how longs its claws were, or how close it was. But her great-great-grandmother had met one and lived to tell about it, so Oostely chirruped out what she hoped was the word for peace, and prayed it would work.


(the tip jar is a kitty for reasons)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1088485.html. You can comment here or there.

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

Apr14

A very small continuation of ♪Brown Paper Packages♫ and …Tied up with String.

It’s Addergoole, so all AG warnings apply. Suggestions of [former abuse] (highlight for spoilers, if those count in a 125-word ficlet).

Ackelea walked around the boy twice. He was vaguely familiar – she hadn’t been hunting this year, so she hadn’t spent that much time looking at the younger students. He was pretty rather than handsome, beardless, his black hair braided and twisted into a bun at the base of his neck.

He had scars, she noted. Scars on his neck, scars on his wrists. She walked around hi a third time and he stayed entirely in pose, but he was trembling.

“All fours,” she ordered lazily, just to see what he would do. Without hesitation, he shifted position. He had scars on the back of his thighs, too.

“Sit comfortably.” She fell into a cross-legged seat in front of him, never mind the kilt. “Tell me something about yourself, my dear.”

Tip Package 😉

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1088102.html. You can comment here or there.